Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids
by Francis456
Summary: Full summery inside. Femslash Crossover. Marina somehow survives and instead of dissolving into sea foam, is banished and exiled and is taken in by Prince Eric. Meanwhile, Ariel is a young mermaid much like Marina with a desire to see the human world, but trouble is afoot as the evil Sea Witch, Ursula, seeks to take over the world's oceans.
1. Rejected by the Sea

**Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids**

**Rejected by the Sea**

**Disclaimer** – I do not own any of the characters from the Little Mermaid. The Walt Disney adaptation is the property of the Walt Disney Company, the anime adaptation is the property of Toei Animation and both adaptations are based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson.

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><p><strong>Summery<strong> – At the end of the Little Mermaid anime adaptation, Marina dissolved into sea foam with a heartbroken Fritz chasing after her, but what if Marina did not dissolve into sea foam? After Marina jumped from Prince Fjord's ship, for some reason she does not dissolve into sea foam and Fritz managed to save her before she drowned. However, her father, grandmother and sisters meet up with her, and since she's become human, Marina is effectively banished from her father's undersea kingdom's territorial waters along with Fritz, who's charged with looking out for her. Fortunately all is not lost for Marina since despite everything, her family still loves her and Marina ends up in the care of Prince Eric, for which she's grateful, but is unable to come out of her own misery. Meanwhile, Ariel, the youngest mermaid princess of the neighbouring undersea kingdom of Atlantica has an urge for adventure and a desire to see the human world, and soon, fate leads them both to meet one another when Ariel rescues Marina from drowning during a storm after she's blown overboard from the ship she was on, and this only serves to fuel the young mermaid's desire to become human, but all is not well, as Ursula, the Atlantican Sea Witch seeks to take advantage of the situation in a nefarious plot to seize control of the world's oceans, and so, as Ariel becomes human and seeks to win Marina's love, it's up to Fritz, Flounder, Sebastian, Scuttle and Marina's sisters to help out while trying to find a way to nullify Ursula's contract, and Fritz soon comes to realise that their only hope in stopping Ursula may lie with the Sea Witch that helped Marina transform into a human and Marina resolves that regardless of the outcome that she will protect Ariel, and should Ariel fail, then she'll deal with Ursula herself. With so many factors and a three-day time limit, can Ariel and Marina fall in love and more importantly, can Ursula be stopped?

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><p>It was a rather dull and grey overcast day out in the middle of the North Sea as three seagulls flew through the clouds, and the sun shone down on the sea through gaps in the clouds as a pod of dolphins leapt out from the water as they swam on the surface. The pod, itself, was about three-strong, soon stopped and poked their heads above the surface as they started to converse, and one of the seagulls that had been flying overhead came and landed on the water between them; not that they minded. In fact, they were quite okay with the bird's presence, but before the dolphins or the seagull could get too comfortable, a huge wooden ship suddenly broke through the layer of fog, causing the seagull to fly up into the air and the three dolphins all scattered and dived beneath the surface. However, as the ship passed by, the dolphins all poked their heads above the surface once again as they watched the ship go on its way.<p>

"I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, and it's hey to the starboard, heave ho," the ship's crew sang, as a few winced up a net full of fish from the water below, and others worked on the ship's masts, "Look out lad, a mermaid be waitin' for you, in mysterious fathoms below."

A sail raised up revealing a wooden carving of a mermaid that was situated at the very front of the ship, and on the deck behind the sail, Prince Eric, the prince of a small kingdom located in the country known as Denmark, had his hand on the rope that was attached to the sail's upper mast and he leaned against the banister in front of him.

"Isn't this great, the salty sea air?" he said before leaning back and closing his eyes briefly as the wind blew against his face and through his hair, "The wind blowing in your face?"

Beside him to his left, with his front paws up on the banister, was his English sheepdog and trusted companion, Max, who just barked in response to his master's question as the wind blew through his fur.

"Perfect day to be at sea?" Eric finished, as he turned to look at his number one manservant, as well as his confidant, Grimsby, who was leaning over the side of the ship, green in the face from seasickness.

"Oh yes, oh delightful," Grimsby replied sarcastically, as he raised his head to glare at Eric before he hurriedly threw his head over the side of the ship once again as he felt another wave of vomit coming up from the depths of his stomach.

"A fine strong wind and a followin' sea," a crew member who was tending to a rope that lead up into the ship's rigging said with just a hint of enthusiasm in his voice, and Eric went over to help him with his work, "King Triton must be in a friendly-type mood."

"King Triton?" Eric asked curiously, as he turned to regard the crewman.

"Why, ruler of the mer-people, lad," another crewman with his left eye closed and a dark brownish orange beard said, as he busily tended to the fish that had been caught in the net and was putting them into an open barrel as Eric turned his attention towards him, "Thought every good sailor knew about him."

"Mer-people," Grimsby, who had recovered from his seasickness, said, as he came up to where Eric was while fixing his hair and purple tie while Eric dropped to one knee and was seeing to Max, "Eric, pay no attention to this nautical nonsense."

"But it ain't nonsense, it's the truth," the crewman insisted, as he walked up to Grimsby with a fish in his hand and started waving it in Grimsby's face, and caused him to retreat as he advanced on him, "I'm tellin' you, down in the depths of the ocean they live… ooowww wo-wow!"

Unfortunately for the crewman, the fish he had in his hand was still alive and managed to wriggle itself free from his grasp due to its slippery scales, and it seemingly made a lunge for Grimsby before slapping him in the face a few times with its caudal fin, and managed to manoeuvre itself over the side of the ship, causing it to fall back into the sea.

"… Heave ho, mysterious fathoms below," the rest of the crew sang, as their song concluded.

"Oh darn, there goes one," the crewman said in dissatisfaction, as he turned and shot a glare in Grimsby's direction, clearly blaming him for the fish's escape.

"Oh, it's just one fish, nothing to worry about," Grimsby replied in his defence, as he glared back at the disgruntled crewman, and then, he turned his attention back to his charge before the crewman had the chance to think up of a reply, "Like I said, Eric, pay no attention to this mythological folklore. It's nothing more than a load of nautical nonsense."

"But, Grim, remember what I told you how I…?" Eric started to say, as he suddenly trailed off, and turned to stare at a woman standing at the very back of the ship, as she stood silently and stared out at the sea.

"Don't be ridiculous," Grimsby scoffed; shaking his head, as he also stared in the woman's direction, "Talking dolphins, and a mermaid that became human? Eric, I'm sure that it was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by the disorientation caused by the coldness of sea fog. Anyway, why did you bring Miss Marina anyway? Don't you know that it's bad luck to bring a woman aboard a vessel?"

"Now who's the one talking nonsense, eh, Grim?" Eric said with a somewhat smug smile, as he turned the tables on his confidant, "That's just a load of superstitious hogwash."

"Ah, touché," Grimsby replied, realising what Eric was doing, and knowing that he was right, but then, he cleared his throat as his expression became serious once again, "But seriously, why bring Miss Marina in the first place?"

"Well, Grim, ever since she started living with me, I've noticed that she doesn't really get out all that often," Eric replied with a rather somewhat sad sigh, as he started to pace round in circles, and turned to look at Marina, and could not help but frown as he recalled her situation, "In fact, she doesn't venture all that far beyond the palace walls unless I'm with her. In short, Grimsby, I brought her along to get her out and about. I don't want her being cooped up in the palace all day long."

"I see," Grimsby said with a sigh, as he had to admit that Eric did have a point.

Marina, herself, had long blonde hair that almost went down to the back of her knees with two strands running down her front over her chest. However, both Eric and Grimsby found themselves agreeing that her eyes were indeed strange. Her irises were a deep sparkling turquoise colour, and whenever the light shone on her pupils, instead of appearing to be black, they appeared to be a deep dark aqua shade of blue. Anyway, Marina currently wore a light blue dress that covered her entire body and hid the fact that she was barefoot. She did not know why, but ever since she became human, she found herself taking a dislike to any kind of footwear and spent most of her time barefoot. Anyway, hanging from her neck was a white circular decoration that had no meaning whatsoever and was just purely for decoration, and it was tied in place by a string that looped round the back of her neck. However, in her hair, situated on the left side of her head near the top was a huge pink pearl hairpin that was surrounded by five white flower petals.

As both he and Grimsby continued to stare at Marina in wonder, Eric could not help but think back to when he and Marina first met, and in all honesty, he could easily say that he would not have believed it if he had not been there to see for himself. Like Grimsby had said, he could have easily dismissed it as a hallucination brought on by the disorientation that the cold air within sea fog could cause, if not for the fact that Marina, herself, existed. It had been six months ago since then…

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><p><strong>Six months previously<strong>

Prince Eric was busy helping the ship's crewmen with their routine chores while the ship was currently sailing up between where the Atlantic Ocean met the English Channel while en route back to his kingdom in Denmark. He was on his way back from yet another failed marriage meeting to a princess of a kingdom located in the country known as Portugal, and like all the previous marriage meetings he had had in the past, it ended in failure as he had decided that he would not marry the princess. It was not the princess, herself, he figured. After all, he had nothing against her as a person, but for him, he wanted to marry for love, not for political gain or to secure some beneficial political alliance. He wanted to marry a girl that he would fall in love with and who would love him back for who he was and not because he was a prince, and upon observing the princess, he could honestly say that she did not really love him, and that she honestly did not want to marry him, and only went along with it out of a sense of obligation towards her parents.

Eric was fortunate in that regard. Both his parents had passed away in the past, and so, he was left as ruler of the Kingdom, though, the law explicitly stated that he could not legally inherit the title of King until he got married. Anyway, Eric found himself rather glad that neither of his parents were around, otherwise he was sure that he would have been forced into a loveless marriage long ago; not that his parents had been forceful people; oh no, quite the contrary; Eric's parents were, in fact, really nice and decent people before they died, and had both been kind and loving towards their son, and Eric remembered how his father had often taken him out to observe the commoners and see how they lived their lives so that he would not grow up to be spoiled and take everything he had for granted. No, Eric had learned all about the various different commoner lifestyles over the years and he knew the value of hard work. His parents had pretty much drilled those lessons into his mind before they died, and it was during one of those excursions that he found his passion for the sea, and despite being a prince, whenever he sailed, he often found himself helping the crew with their chores like now; he was busy using a rope to move a sail so that the wind would push the ship in the right direction, and he did this because he felt that as a passenger of the ship, then he felt that he had to do his bit and pull his own weight, but in truth, he had chosen to help out due to pure and utter boredom and needed something to pass the time, and had found that he actually quite enjoyed working round the ships he sailed on.

Anyway, despite his parents being nice people, they were still the King and Queen of their kingdom, and as such, being the rulers of a kingdom had its share of disadvantages, such as the responsibilities of dealing with foreign regions and maintaining ties between them. Eric was no fool. He knew the pressures of ruling a kingdom, and he was aware of the pressure that he was under to settle down and find a queen. Of course, the rules of his kingdom in regards to the Royal Family were not dictated by arranged marriages or restricted to social classes, and so, Eric knew that he had the freedom to marry whomever he wanted regardless of their status, but he knew that most people, especially those that made up the ranks of the nobility, were expecting him to marry a princess; probably to secure a political tie with another kingdom, and Eric knew that had his parents been alive, they would have probably pressured him to the point where he would agree to marry the next princess he met just to get them off his back. Of course, they wouldn't have forced him to marry, but the pressure to marry ASAP in order to preserve their familial line would have had them on his case constantly.

Luckily, though, Grimsby, who despite being his manservant had become somewhat of a pseudo guardian to him after his parents had died, respected his wishes enough that he mainly distanced himself from those marital affairs and only reminded Eric every now and then about the kingdom's desire to have him settle down, but fortunately he was not constantly on his back over it, since he knew that his charge was rather choosy and that he wanted to be sure that his wife would love him back for him being Eric the person and not Prince Eric. In short, Eric did not want a gold digger who only wanted to marry him for his status and he did not want to marry anyone who was only marrying him out of a sense of political obligation.

"Marina!" a voice that sounded like it belonged to a child came, sounding rather alarmed, and Eric was brought out of his thoughts and back to reality, "Hey, you big oafish barbarians, keep your hands off her!"

"Oh my gosh!" a voice that Eric recognised as belonging to one of the crewmen, "What witchery is this? A talking dolphin!"

Eric looked down near the back of the ship and saw that near the back of the ship, caught in a fishing net was what appeared to be a blue dolphin calf glaring up at two of the crewmen who were tending to a woman with long blonde hair and wearing a light blue dress, and even from this distance, he could see that she looked to be in her mid-to-late teens. Even from up in the rigging, Eric noticed that the woman was struggling, obviously frightened and the dolphin calf was flopping around angrily as he attempted to reprimand the crewmen for hassling the woman.

"What the… who are they?" he thought to himself, though, he had to admit that he was really astounded that the dolphin could actually talk.

He had heard rumours from others about talking animals, but in the past had just dismissed them as old wives tales told by drunks or people who were delusional, but as Eric watched the scene, much to his astonishment, he could clearly hear the dolphin cursing at the crewmen as they appeared to be manhandling the blonde-haired woman, whom he could honestly say that he had never met before and was curious as to how she came to be on board the ship. Was she a stowaway? That did seem plausible, but then how would the dolphin know her and why would he be shouting at the crewmen.

Thinking quickly, he jumped down from the rigging and onto the deck, somehow managing to land on his feet without suffering any injury whatsoever, and then, he sprinted towards the woman and the dolphin calf.

"What the heck is going on here?" one of the crewmen, holding the woman from behind said as he fought to restrain her, "Easy, miss, we're not going to hurt you."

"Leave her alone!" the dolphin shouted, as it glared dangerously at the crewmen, "Just leave her alone, she's done nothing to you!"

"Silence, demon dolphin!" one crewmen stated, as he came into view wielding a harpoon, clearly intending to use it to kill the "demon dolphin", "I don't know what the story is, but you ain't gonna bewitch this little girl with your sorcery any longer!"

The woman's eyes widened in alarm upon seeing the harpoon, and her struggling suddenly intensified, catching the two crewmen, who were trying to calm her down, off guard, and she managed to break free and ran between the dolphin and the crewman wielding the harpoon, and stood with her legs in a defensive stance, knees bent and with her arms spread out at her sides and gave the harpoon-wielding crewman a defiant stare.

"Huh, what is this, we're saving you from this evil creature's influence," the harpoon wielder said, as he gave the woman a confused stare.

However, the woman just shook her head and continued to glare at the crewmen, and a look of disgust materialised on her face, much to the confusion of the crewmen.

"Don't worry about me, Marina," the dolphin said from behind her, "You just get out of here."

However, the woman, Marina, turned back to look at the dolphin and her look softened somewhat as she flashed the dolphin a friendly smile, and shook her head, causing the dolphin's eyes to widen in alarm, and the three watching crewmen became even more confused.

"Huh, what do you mean you won't go?" the dolphin said in a stunned tone, "Marina…"

"What's going on here?" Eric suddenly spoke up, having seen enough.

"Oh, Prince Eric, sorry, we didn't see you there," one of the crewmen said, as he turned to regard the prince with a look of surprise.

"Never mind that, what's going on?" Eric demanded, as he glared at the three crewmen.

"Well, Your Highness… er, well… um," one of the crewmen started to say, and found that he could not find the right words to use due to Eric's intense glare making him nervous.

"You know that we were fishin', right?" a fourth crewman said, as he walked up behind Eric, and Eric nodded as he turned his attention towards him, "Well, when we brought da nets up, dere was dis dolphin along wi' dis woman."

Eric frowned as the crewman pointed at both the dolphin and the woman as he mentioned them.

"Well, we went to help the girl, but then, the dolphin started shouting at us," one of the other crewmen replied, finally finding the confidence to speak.

"They were manhandling her," the dolphin spoke up in its own defence, as it glared at the crewmen.

"We were rescuing her," one of the other crewmen shot back with a contemptuous glare, "What the heck have you done to her, you demon? You've bewitched her."

The woman shook her head while glaring at the man who had spoken, and Eric knew that the crewmen had got it wrong.

"That's a lie!" the dolphin shouted, as it glared up at the crewmen, "We were on our way to the nearest land mass before we got caught in your nets!"

"Alright, alright, enough!" Eric declared with a glare of his own that silenced all parties, and then, he turned his attention towards the dolphin.

"What's your name?" he asked simply, as he let out a sigh to calm himself down.

"My name?" the dolphin said, sounding confused, obviously being taken aback by the prince's calm tone, but after a brief few seconds, decided to answer truthfully, "Fritz, Your Highness, my name is Fritz, and that is my friend, Marina."

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><p><strong>Present<strong>

Yes, that had been what had happened. While on the way back, the crew had decided to do a spot of fishing, and Marina and her dolphin friend, Fritz, had ended up getting tangled up in the fishing nets, and the crew had mistaken Fritz for a demon that had bewitched Marina and all because Fritz could speak, they had mistaken him for a demon. However, Eric could see the truth. He knew that Fritz was no demon. He had just been looking out for his friend and had mistakenly believed that the crewmen were manhandling Marina, and Marina had come to the same conclusion.

Anyway, after Eric had gotten the misunderstanding cleared up, he had asked Fritz to tell him their story, since he had to admit that it was not every day that fisherman pulled up dolphins along with human girls, and it soon became apparent that Marina was a mute, in other words, she could not speak, and Fritz, after much debate had finally decided to tell him their story, though, it had taken a pleading look from Marina before he relented, but in any case, Fritz had explained that Marina was originally a mermaid and the youngest of six princesses that lived in the Undersea Kingdom, Mediterranea, and who he had convinced to go to the surface when she was not supposed to… well, from what Fritz had said, Marina had always wanted to go to the surface, but was too young, but she wanted to see it for herself, since her sisters had all gone up to the surface and told her stories of their excursions. Anyway, Fritz had convinced Marina to sneak out from the Merman Palace one night, and Marina had rescued a prince from a storm and dragged him to shore. However, for Marina, it had been love at first sight, and from what Fritz had said; both he and Marina had discovered a statue of the Prince earlier that day before they had snuck out from the Merman Palace after the ship transporting it had been sunk in a storm that had come the previous night.

Anyway, regardless, Marina had fallen in love and stayed with the Prince till morning until a group of humans from a nearby building had come and discovered the prince, but the prince had not seen Marina, since she had been forced to retreat due to the other humans, though Marina had told Fritz that the reason she left him was because she felt that him seeing her tail would have caused him to become frightened. In any case, from what Fritz had said, both he and Marina had been caught while on the way back and taken back to the Merman Palace, and he would have been punished for aiding Marina in her "escape", since Marina's father had come to view him as a bad influence on his daughter, but Marina's grandmother, the Mer-King's mother, had heard his story of how Marina had saved the Prince and had decided to award Marina with the pearl hairpin that she had in her hair. From what Eric understood, it acted as a pass of sorts that enabled those who wore it to come and go from the Merman Palace whenever they pleased, and only those that wore it were allowed to go to the surface. In any case, because of that, Marina and Fritz had both escaped punishment, but Marina was infatuated with the Prince, and so, she had gone to see the local sea witch, whose name was so terrifying… at least according to Fritz that no one in Mediterranea dared speak it aloud and just addressed her as the Sea Witch. However, Eric had managed to get the name from Fritz, Devillia Del Ray, who was a cross between a human sorceress and a devil ray fish. In any case, Marina had gone to Devillia's domain seeking her help, and Devillia had agreed to help her, but at an awfully harsh price.

The price was that the Prince had to reciprocate her love, and if not, then on the sunrise of the day after his wedding to another woman, Marina's heart would break and she would dissolve into sea foam, and so, Devillia had given Marina a potion that would transform her into a human, and took her voice from her as payment, but told Marina that she had to take the potion before sunrise the following day, otherwise the potion would lose its effect, and also, since Marina would become human, it meant that she would no longer be able to see her father, grandmother, sisters or even Fritz again, and yet, despite knowing all this, she went through with it anyway, and she had spent a full month living with the Prince, and they had become close, but according to Fritz, the Prince's parents were not too happy about Marina's presence in their son's life. He did not know the full story, but he did know that the Prince's parents wanted him to marry a princess that they had chosen for him, and Marina had confided in Fritz… since Marina tended to move her lips whenever she wanted to communicate, and Fritz, as it turned out, just so happened to be a phenomenal lip-reader despite his young age; anyway, Marina had confided in Fritz that the Prince confessed to her that he did not want to marry the Princess and that he only wanted to marry the girl who had found him after he had believed that he had been washed ashore after that storm.

In truth, it was Marina who had saved him, but since she had been forced to retreat, the Prince had not seen her, and so, the Prince had mistakenly believed that he had been washed ashore, and the girl who had discovered him had black hair, but since he could not find her, and he also believed that he would never meet her again, the Prince had decided that he would marry Marina instead, whom he had dubbed, Princess Mermaid, since Marina was incapable of telling him her name and he had found her by the river that was close to the sea. However, in any case, Eric learned from Fritz that the Prince's parents had somehow managed to trick him into going to the Princess's kingdom, and as it turned out, the princess in question turned out, as if by some cruel twist of fate, the princess was in fact the same girl who had found him after Marina had dragged him ashore, and so, having found his girl, the Prince had effectively cast Marina aside, which Eric found himself infuriated by.

"I can't believe that uncaring bastard," he thought to himself, feeling rather infuriated at the Prince for his disregard for Marina's feelings, "He builds up that poor girl's hopes and dreams, only to shatter them and cast her aside as if she no longer matters to him once he finds his dream girl… no, that's just not right."

He shook his head as he calmed down, knowing that mulling over it would not help matters. As for him and Marina, he knew that he could marry Marina himself, and they had definitely spent long enough in each other's company for a relationship to develop, but despite everything, to him, Marina came across as nothing more than a little sister. Sure, he did care for her, but he was not in love with her and he made no secret of this. He had told Marina that he was not in love with her, since he did not want to build her hopes up like that other prince had done, and Marina, surprisingly, felt the same way. She did indeed grow to care for Eric, but the feelings she had towards him were similar to the love she had for her sisters. In other words, Marina only saw Eric as an older brother figure; nothing more. That had relived Eric since he had anticipated Marina suffering from a broken heart.

Anyway, after the Prince's wedding, Marina had been waiting for the sunrise that would signal her demise, but then her sisters had emerged, and along with Fritz, who had told them of the situation, and they had presented her with a magical knife that they had gotten from Devillia in exchange for their long hair and told her that her only hope was to plunge the knife into the Prince's heart and kill him, and when his blood touched her feet, she would become a mermaid again, but unfortunately, despite everything, Marina still loved the Prince and could not bring herself to kill him, and so, she elected to turn into sea foam, and she then cast the knife back into the sea and jumped off the ship, but as sunrise came, for some reason or other, Marina had not transformed into sea foam, and Fritz had saved her from drowning, though, it had been quite a struggle for the small calf to keep Marina's body above the surface, and if that was not enough, Marina's family had come to the surface, and her father had effectively banished her from Mediterranea's territorial waters, as per the law of Mediterranea, and Fritz had been charged with looking after her, but Fritz had assured Eric that despite everything, Marina's family still loved her and he had to admit that he had seen Marina's sisters come to visit her. After all, the law stated that Marina's banishment was mandatory, but there was nothing in the law against visiting those who were banished, and so, with that in mind, Marina's father had allowed his daughters to abuse any loopholes in the law that they could find in regards to Marina.

"Gotta admit, as farfetched as it sounds, even if I hadn't seen Marina's sisters, I would still find myself believing it," he said aloud, causing Grimsby to turn and give him a sceptical look.

Of course, Grimsby had also been on that trip, but unfortunately, on the way back, he had taken seriously ill and had been confided to his cabin, and so, he had not seen Fritz and believed that the whole story was nothing more than a hallucination, and as for Fritz, Eric had released him back into the sea and he had followed the ship back to Denmark where he continued to meet with Marina on the shoreline just outside his castle. It was the only area that Marina went to unsupervised outside the castle, otherwise, whenever she left, Eric was always with her.

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><p>Not that far from where Eric and Grimsby were, Marina tilted her head slightly as she listened in on their conversation and a small smile etched itself onto the edges of her mouth, as she knew that Eric was thinking about how they had first met. She had to admit that it seemed bizarre. She was not even supposed to be alive, let alone human. She remembered how she had tried to kill the Prince that she had fallen in love with, and how, despite everything, she just could not bring herself to go through with it. Despite casting her aside in favour of the Black-Haired Girl, Marina realised that she still loved the Prince, whom she had come to know as Fjord, but still called him the Prince due to her believing that it was not proper for her to address him by his given name. Anyway, despite knowing that failure to kill Fjord would result in her death, she had decided to spare him and accept her fate, and had cast the knife back into the sea. She reasoned that if she dissolved into sea foam, then whenever Fjord was at sea, she could always be round him and find some way to be of service to him. Despite him choosing the Black-Haired Girl over her, Marina could honestly say that she now understood what true love was.<p>

True love meant putting your lover's desires ahead of one's own. Marina had learned that, and as she hesitated while standing over Fjord, she had come to realise that despite not being able to be with him, she still wanted him to be happy, even if it meant that she could not share in that happiness. There was a saying that if you truly loved someone, then you had to be willing to set them free, and if they did not come back, then it was never meant to be. Marina could now honestly say that she understood the meaning of that. There was really no point in pursuing a relationship with Fjord if he clearly did not reciprocate her feelings. She could not force him to love her, and she knew that pursuing someone that clearly did not love her back and trying to force them to love her would inevitably lead to disaster, since the resulting relationship would be anything but healthy.

In any case, Marina had jumped off the back of the ship, though, she could have sworn that she had heard Fjord calling out to her, but that had not mattered to her. There was nothing he could have done to help her anyway. The moment he had married the Black-Haired Girl, her fate had been sealed. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it. It was too late for her. She remembered floating on the surface of the sea as she awaited the sunrise that would dissolve her into sea foam as she thought about everything she had gone through and everything she had given up in the process, and she could honestly say without a shadow of a doubt, that she had come to regret it. She had thrown everything she had away in the pursuit of love and in the end; it had all been for naught, since the man she loved had chosen another over her. It was true when Devillia had told her that love made people blind.

She felt as if she had dived headfirst into the shallow end of a swimming pool without any thought as to the consequences of such an action. When she first laid eyes on Fjord, she was instantly in love, though, to be fair, she had gained a fascination for the human world beforehand after hearing her sisters' stories of their excursions to the surface. Their stories had fascinated her and she had wanted to go up and see the surface world for herself, to see if it was as good as her sisters had all claimed. However, that night, when Fritz had convinced her to sneak out and go to the surface, seeing fireworks and the ship that Fjord was on, and seeing Fjord in person and remembering that the statue she and Fritz had found earlier that day on that sunken ship was in Fjord's likeness, she was instantly taken in by how beautiful and handsome Fjord was, and it only served to fuel her desire to experience what life was like on the surface.

However, unfortunately, Devillia had conjured up a storm that caused Fjord's ship to sink, and she had rescued him from drowning and dragged him to shore, and as she stayed with him and watched over his unconscious form, all the while begging him to wake up and not die, her feelings for him grew, but the following morning, she had been forced to retreat as a group of humans, led by the Black-Haired Girl that Fjord was now married to, came and found him. Nonetheless, Marina had come to the decision that she would become human so she could be with him, and she had effectively thrown all caution to the wind. Later, after she had been awarded with her Pearl Hairpin after her grandmother had heard the story of how she had saved Fjord from drowning, she had gone to Devillia's domain to seek her help, and she had, at least in her own mind, rather stupidly agreed to the deal despite Devillia's warnings about the consequences. However, she did briefly hesitate when Devillia informed her that she would be taking her voice away from her as payment for the deal, but quickly regained her resolve, and Devillia took her voice from her as payment.

"You know, it would be rather easy to blame the Prince," she thought to herself, still refusing to use Fjord's name when she referred to him, as she shook her head, "But that's wrong. It's not his fault."

That much was true, she had to admit. It would be easy to pin all the blame on Fjord and she could have someone that she could verbally rant and rave over in her mind, but despite her regret over becoming human, she still loved Fjord and her love for him was able to make her see the truth as clear as day. She could not bring herself to blame him, and thinking it over; she had long since come to the realisation that the blame clearly and solely rested with her. It was her own fault that she was in the fix she was in. She had seen Fjord and fallen in love with him. It was not like he had told her to become human, and in fact, he had no idea that Marina even existed until he found her on the riverbank the day after she had become human, and she had to admit that had had been a rather painful experience as, in addition to feeling as if someone was strangling her, it also felt like someone had been cutting her tail in two with a sword right down the middle and she knew that that had been her legs forming. Anyway, since she was rendered mute, she found herself unable to communicate with Fjord. Heck, she found herself to be illiterate, since she had no idea how to write, and during her month-long stay, she had found it rather difficult to adjust to life on land, but she did not care, since she had Fjord with her and in her mind, that was all that mattered.

She had to admit that it was rather stupid and selfish of her. She had been told that she would never be able to see her family again, and still, she had agreed without any ounce of hesitation whatsoever, as if her family did not really matter to her anymore, though, she loved her family very much, but at the time, she had been thinking of Fjord and had figured that it was a price worth paying, under the assumption that her family would automatically understand. She never even considered their own feelings on the issue and had just assumed that they would accept it. The possibility of her family objecting to her decision had not even entered her head. It disgusted her whenever she thought back to that faithful day, but she had to admit that at the time, all she cared about with being with Fjord and nothing else mattered; not even Fritz, despite his countless protests. She had only been thinking about herself and herself alone.

Another thing that she had disregarded was the possibility of Fjord loving another and despite Devillia warning her of the consequences, she still agreed, though, she had to admit that she was a bit uneasy when Devillia had told her, but she also had to admit that it was more the fear of becoming sea foam rather than the possibility of Fjord loving someone else that caused her unease. Like with her family's possible objections, the possibility of Fjord falling in love with another woman had not entered Marina's head. She had been so blinded by her love for Fjord that she had just assumed that he would fall for her automatically and that would be that. She never gave an ounce of thought to what reality was really like. She believed that everything would be okay, and even when Fjord told her that he wanted to marry the Black-Haired Girl that he believed rescued him from the storm when his parents wanted him to marry a princess from a neighbouring kingdom known as the Suomi Kingdom, he had told her that he believed that he would never see her again, and in that case, he would marry her instead, and it had given Marina hope as she continued to live in her own little world.

Unfortunately, though, fate, as it turned out, proved to be a cruel mistress, since Fjord's parents were not too happy over their son's decision to marry her instead of the princess that they had chosen for him, and so, Fjord had been tricked into boarding a ship bound for the Suomi Kingdom when he was told that his mother had fallen ill, but it was just a trick, and Fjord had brought her along, and so, they were forcibly separated, and then, Fjord had elected to go to the Suomi Kingdom and tell the Princess to her face that he had no desire to marry her, but unfortunately, fate had once again proven just how cruel she could be when it turned out that the Suomi Princess and the Hlack-Haired Girl that found him on the shore both turned out to be one and the same. Marina had eventually been released, since it had no longer been necessary to imprison her, and she remembered an excited Fjord bursting into the room and rather excitedly telling her that he had found the Black-Haired Girl, and that she was, in fact, the Suomi Princess, and it was then that Marina's delusion had shattered, just like the mirror she had dropped when Fjord announced his intention to marry the Suomi Princess.

That had been a big wake-up to Marina, and she had taken it like a slap in the face. It was as if reality, itself, had had enough of her living out her fantasies and had slapped her in the face, and she soon found herself in a dire situation, since she knew that if Fjord married the Suomi Princess, she would dissolve into sea foam, and at first, she had been scared and frightened as the reality of the situation suddenly dawned on her. However, she had informed Fritz, who in turn informed her sisters, who had gone to Devillia to ask her to save their sister, and Devillia had given them a magical knife in exchange for their long hair, and for her to avoid her fate, she had to plunge the knife into Fjord's heart, and once his blood touched her feet, she would become a mermaid again, but she could not bring herself to do it, and upon experiencing her epiphany, she no longer feared her fate, but instead, chose to embrace it, though, she did regret that she would not be able to meet with her sisters.

"However, I guess fate has deemed that I haven't been punished enough," she thought feeling somewhat embittered, as she remembered how when the sun rose, instead of dissolving into sea foam like Devillia had said, she continued to float on the surface, and she also remembered hearing Fritz's heartbroken and panicked cries as he came after her and if not for him, she was sure that she would have drowned.

That had been a bit of a shock. Despite what Devillia had told her, she had not dissolved into sea foam and had almost drowned; not that she objected to that. In fact, despite her surprise, she decided that she would be content in drowning, since she believed that she deserved it for the heartache and sorrow that she believed she had put her family and Fritz through, though, she could not understand why she did not become sea foam. Was it possible that Devillia had lied? However, she then remembering just who Devillia was and she found that extremely unlikely. Devillia was a sea witch, and any deal made with her came at a hefty cost and the consequences for failure were always extremely harsh. It made no sense for Devillia to lie to her. What possible motive could she have for lying to her, and with that in mind, Marina figured that it had to be something else.

Perhaps the sea, itself, had interpreted her transformation from mermaid to human as an unpardonable act of treason and it had rejected her. Maybe the sea did not want Marina inhabiting it in any shape or form, even if it was just as harmless foam. She found herself wondering if her failure to dissolve was a punishment by the sea for her "betrayal". She had been a mermaid after all, and an inhabitant of the sea, but she had become human and elected to live on land. Perhaps the sea was punishing her for her preference to land. If she had drowned, then she had no doubt that the sea would have eventually deposited her dead body on a nearby shoreline since she knew that she would have eventually ended up being washed ashore, provided that the marine life did not eat away at her beforehand, but she doubted the sea would have let them feast on her corpse. Maybe that's why Fritz had successfully managed to rescue her. However, afterwards she had met up with her father, grandmother and sisters…

* * *

><p><strong>Six months previously<strong>

Fritz had just brought Marina back to the surface after she failed to dissolve into sea foam and was feeling rather heartbroken.

"Oh, Marina," he cried in a broken-hearted tone, "Why, why didn't you do it? Why didn't you kill the Prince?"

"I couldn't," Marina mouthed simply; despite moving her lips, no sound came.

However, since Fritz could not see Marina's face, he had no idea what she had just said. Marina was currently on the surface of the sea lying on top of Fritz's small body, though, Marina was so big in comparison to the dolphin calf that Fritz found himself constantly adjusting his position so that Marina would not fall off. However, seeing her friend constantly struggling to keep her above the water, Marina felt her heart break, and tears started to well up in her eyes.

"Please, Fritz, just let me die," she begged silently, feeling rather frustrated that Fritz could not hear her, "I'm not worth it."

She found herself rather accepting towards the possibility of her own death, whether by dissolving into sea foam or drowning, it did not matter to her. She felt that she deserved to die after everything she put her family and Fritz through. She had been so foolish, blind and lovesick that she had effectively shut herself off from reality, and she had also went on unfounded assumptions that everything would be okay. She had been so selfish in her pursuit of Fjord that no one had mattered to her; not her grandmother, not her father, not her sisters and most definitely, not Fritz. She had just assumed that they would understand and accept the situation, and despite Fritz expressing that he did not want her to become a human, she had assumed that he would eventually grow to accept it, but seeing Fritz now, it was clear to Marina that he never did come to accept her choice, and in fact, it had torn him apart on the inside

"Why, why do you even bother?" she mused silently, as she thought about her relationship with the young dolphin calf, "Even after everything I put you through, you still remain loyal to me, why? I'm not worthy of such loyalty."

Fritz had been her closest friend for a long time, though, she had to admit that when they first met, Fritz had been rather mean to her. She had been minding her own business and her mind had wondered as she had been swimming rather carelessly, and she had bumped into Fritz by accident, though, at the time, Fritz did not like mer-people very much and thought that they were just a species of stuck-up snobs that swam around acting as if they owned the ocean, and he had ranted and raved at Marina, causing her to cry, but afterwards, he had been guilt-tripped into apologising, since Marina did indeed apologise for bumping into him, but Fritz had been so infuriated that a mer-person had bumped into him that he had not been listening when Marina had apologised. However, once he had been forced to apologise, he soon came to realise that Marina was nothing like he envisioned and their friendship took off from there.

Since then, they had gotten pretty close. Since Marina could not go up to the surface, since she had not come of age, she had passed her time playing with Fritz and they played many games together, though, thinking back, Marina realised that those games were very childish, but they did help relieve her boredom, though, her desire to see the surface world for herself persisted, and she and Fritz would often explore sunken ships that Devillia sank whenever she had decided to conjure up a storm, like the ship that contained the statue of Fjord. Her sisters often teased her about her friendship with Fritz, claiming that if she continued to hang out with him, then she would not get a Pearl Hairpin, which often caused Marina to panic, but then her sisters would burst out in laughter, letting her know that they were just teasing her, though, it was no secret that her father had viewed Fritz as a bad influence on her, but put up with Fritz; that is, until Fritz had convinced her to sneak out that night. The original intention had been just a quick excursion to the surface and they would return before anyone knew they were gone, but due to the storm and Marina staying with Fjord, they had been caught, and Marina remembered her father telling her that she was not to play with Fritz again, but then, her grandmother had intervened, having heard the story from the Sea-Bottom Police Patrol Leader that Fritz had told during his interrogation about how Marina had saved Fjord and how she had decided to give Marina her Pearl Hairpin and so, the Mer-King had, albiet, rather reluctantly, rescinded his order.

However, it was afterwards that she had gone to see Devillia, and Fritz had reluctantly gone with her, though, he had originally threatened to tell the Mer-King if she did not back down, but Marina told him that if he did tell her father, then she would never speak to him again and that had caused him to back down, and he did save her from Devillia's magically mutated polyps and a giant clam that had tried to devour her, and he decided that if she was not going to listen to him, then he would accompany her, and though he was locked out when Marina and Devillia met, he had heard their entire conversation, and was heartbroken when Marina emerged without her voice and also confessed that he did not want her to become a human, and she had tried to provide him with some comfort.

However, when she thought about it and how determined she had been to become human, she had come to realise that despite her thoughts to the contrary and her attempts to comfort him, she had, at least in her mind, effectively abandoned Fritz; even refusing to let him accompany her to the Summer Palace where Fjord was located, claiming that it would only make their parting harder. However, as she thought about it, she had believed that she had effectively blown Fritz off as she remembered hearing him calling after her, and yet, she had ignored him. Now that she thought about it, it had come across as cold and uncaring. Of everyone she knew that had suffered because of her choice, Fritz suffered the most. He had come to visit her once at the Summer Palace, only to have stones thrown at him by a group of human boys, but Marina and Fjord had both come to his aid, and Fritz and Marina had a brief moment before Fritz left telling her that if she ever needed him then she was to hold her pearl hairpin up high and he would come to her, and the next time they met was after Fjord announced his marriage to the Suomi Princess, in which, she explained the situation and then Fritz had left to inform her sisters.

"I'm too good to die," she thought to herself bitterly, as she remembered what Fritz had said, "Since when is abandoning your friends and family for your own selfish desires considered good?"

She remembered how heartbroken Fritz has been when she had emerged from Devillia's home and how he confessed that he did not want her to become human. However, before she could continue down that train of thought, the sound of something emerging from the sea grabbed her attention, and her eyes widened in surprise when she saw her father, grandmother and sisters all emerge from the sea. Upon looking at her father, who had a stern, unreadable expression on his face, Marina could not help but lower her head in shame with her eyes gazing down at Fritz's blowhole as she averted her gaze. She could not look him in the eye; not after what she had done. She had become a human and turned her back on the sea. How could she possibly face her father after she had committed what could effectively be seen as an act of treason?

"Marina," he said in an unreadable tone, "Marina, look at me."

Marina shook her head as she clenched her eyes shut, fearful of what he was going to say or do to her, but if he was going to execute her, he might as well get it over with.

"So, I see that what I've been told is true, then," he said, his tone still neutral and unreadable, though, it seemed as if he had decided that let Marina continue to avert her gaze for the time being, "You have become a human, then?"

Marina only nodded in response.

"And you gave your voice to the Sea Witch as payment for her help," her grandmother added, though, her tone was not as unreadable as her son's; her tone sounded somewhat disappointed rather than furious, but to Marina, that did not matter.

She was sure that her father was furious with her and had come to either kill her or disown her. Since she was not going to turn into sea foam, and with Fritz being so determined to save her despite the way in which she had betrayed him, she figured that if she was going to die, might as well be by her father's hand. In any case, she nodded in response to her grandmother's statement.

"And I also understand that your sisters all went to the Sea Witch and traded their hair for a magical knife, which you didn't use in order to transform you back into a mermaid," her father went on, and Marina noticed all her sisters flinch at that out of the corner of her eye as their father shot them all a small, but brief glare.

"I'm sorry, my sisters," she thought miserably, unable to meet their combined gaze as she felt that she had betrayed them as well.

True, she had decided not to kill Fjord out of the love she still had for him, and decided that he should live and be happy, but in doing so, she had also betrayed her sisters, and once again, she felt as if she had turned her back on them; just like she had turned her back on her father, her grandmother and especially Fritz. All she could do now was hang her head in shame as she awaited her fate

"Marina, look at me," her father said, repeating his earlier statement in a more stern tone of voice, as he moved over to her and placed his right hand underneath her chin and gently raised his daughter's head till her eyes were fixed on his face.

Marina immediately tried to look away, but her father brought his left hand up behind her head and after grabbing a handful of her hair, he gently forced her to look at him, and after a few seconds of struggling, she noticed that her father was not glaring hatefully at her like she thought he was. Okay, he did have a bit of a glare, but it was nowhere near as intense as she believed it had been. Looking into her father's eyes she could see sorrow, sadness and disappointment all mixed into one, but there was no amount of hatred present in his gaze whatsoever and that surprised her.

"I won't lie to you," he said with a sigh, "It's true that I'm very angry with you."

Marina flinched at that, despite his tone sounding more disappointed than angry.

"You threw your whole life away in pursuit of that human," he went on, his tone still sounding disappointed, "And yet despite it being for naught, you turn down the only chance you had at escaping your fate."

Marina just nodded.

"I couldn't do it," was what her lips said, "I just couldn't bring myself to do it. His happiness is my happiness. Isn't that what true love is about?"

Fortunately, her father was just as good a lip-reader as Fritz was and understood her perfectly, and much to her surprise, he smiled.

"Yes, that is true," he said in a gentler tone, as his look softened somewhat, "I see that despite your misfortunate, you've learned what true love really is, and to tell you the truth, despite you forfeiting your chance to become a mermaid again, I'm quite glad that you haven't soiled your hands in blood. To have become a mermaid again, you would have to have taken that boy's blood on your hands, and I don't think I could live with the fact that my youngest daughter had become a murderer; even if it had been necessary."

Marina's eyes widened in confusion at hearing this. Sure, she understood what her father was saying, and in truth, even if she had no longer loved Fjord, she knew that she would have still been uncomfortable with the thought of killing him, since she had never killed anyone before. Heck, she did not fancy the idea of becoming a murderer herself. Thinking it over, she had to wonder what Fjord would have thought of her if she had done the deed. On the outlook, it seemed a case of "If I can't have you, no one can", and no matter how much she tried to reason out her motives, in the end, it all boiled down to cold-blooded murder, and it seemed especially unfair that someone had to die so that another can be spared. Those had been factors in her decision to spare Fjord. Even if she no longer loved him, she found herself coming to realise that she probably would have spared him anyway, since killing him would have meant that she was still just as selfish as she had been before, since she would have killed him for her own benefit, and she knew that her own selfishness was to blame for the entire situation in the first place, and it was only then that she had developed the courage to face her seemingly inevitable fate. However, she thought that her father would not have cared for any of that.

"You know, Marina," her sister with the strange brownish red hair said, as she moved closer, "Thinking it over, I have to agree. I don't think I could've lived with the fact that my little sister had blood on her hands and I don't think you would be able to either."

"Regatta," Marina thought, as she stared at her sister.

Of the six mermaid princesses, Regatta was the oldest. She had a golden starfish shaped jewel with a ruby-red orb in the centre on the centre of her forehead with the two upper diagonal prongs extending all the way to her hairline that marked her position as Crown Princess, and she wore her pearl hairpin on the left side of her head near the back. She had the same colour of eyes as Marina; in fact all the sisters had the same eye colour and all the sisters, sans Marina, had what appeared to be greyish purple eye shadow between their top eyelids and eyebrows.

"Yes, I know that it's surprising, but murder is still murder, regardless of the victim's species," Marina's father said with a stern stare, "Had you actually gone ahead and killed the Prince, it would have proved that you had learned nothing at all."

"I'm guessing that you left your Pearl Hairpin with him, haven't you, Marina?" her grandmother said, as she noticed that her pearl hairpin with missing, and Marina nodded in confirmation.

"Now then, as glad as I am that you spared the prince, the fact still remains that you are still human, and even I don't know why you didn't dissolve into sea foam," her father said in a serious tone and despite lacking any kind of anger, the seriousness was enough to cause Marina to shudder.

* * *

><p><strong>Present<strong>

Thinking back, Marina had been quite relieved that her family still loved her. It had been a bit of a surprise to learn that her family were glad that she did not kill Fjord and that she did not receive the hatred she believed her family held for her. In fact all of her sisters were glad that she spared Fjord, since none of them wanted to have a murderer in the family, and despite everything, they were proud of her for learning her lesson, though, she still believed that they should hate her for turning her back on them in the first place. They had given her a chance at redemption and she had blown it because of the price she would have had to have paid, and she still viewed it as a betrayal on her part. However, her family's lack of hatred did help ease her guilt somewhat despite what she thought.

Unfortunately, though, due to her actions and the fact that she could not return to the Merman Palace, her father had no choice, but to implement the law and banish her from Mediterranean Waters. The law was clear. Like she had anticipated, she had committed an act of treason according to the law, but since the kind of treason in question posed no threat to Mediterranea, itself, and had not caused anyone harm, she had escaped execution. Instead she had been banished from the Kingdom, much to Fritz's protests, but her father had charged Fritz with looking after her, effectively banishing him as well. However, despite her banishment, she had shared a goodbye hug with her father, grandmother and sisters and her father let her know that, despite everything, he still loved her, and as a going away present, her grandmother had given her a new pearl hairpin, which she had initially turned down due to her newly acquired status as an exile, but her grandmother insisted that she take it as a memento, taking advantage of a loophole in the law, in which, Marina's exile status would not come into effect until after she had left Mediterranean Waters, and there was nothing in the law that said that exiles had to hand back their pearl hairpins, and also, there was also nothing in the law that said that exiles were not allowed to be visited by their family and friends, which meant that Marina occasionally had visits from her sisters.

In any case, Marina and Fritz had both been escorted to Mediterranea's border with the neighbouring undersea kingdom, Atlantica, which King Triton ruled, and Marina had vague memories of actually visiting Atlantica along with her sisters and mother before she died. However, those memories were so vague that she could hardly remember them, and ever since the death of the Atlantican Queen, Athena, Triton had become so embittered by the loss of his wife, and not long afterwards, her own mother died, that Mediterranea had severed its ties with Atlantica, since she remembered that her mother had been an ambassador and had been good friends with Queen Athena, but after her death, Triton had banned music from the kingdom, and after her mother died, her father had wanted nothing more to do with Atlantica so long as Triton reminded in his embittered state.

Anyway, once in Atlantican Waters, Fritz and Marina were effectively on their own, and Fritz continued to struggle to keep Marina's head above the water, but after a few hours, they had gotten tangled in fishing nets and were taken aboard a ship en route back to a kingdom in a country that Marina now knew to be called Denmark. As it turned out, the ship belonged to the kingdom's prince, a man called Eric, and he had been on his way home from a failed marriage meeting. Needless to say, Marina felt that fate was taunting her by forcing yet another prince into her life, though, he did save Fritz's life when the crewmen were planning on killing him when they had mistaken him for a demon, and he did offer Marina a place to stay in his castle as his ward, and not having anywhere to go, she accepted.

Accepting Eric's invitation had turned out to be very beneficial for her, since unlike with Fjord, Marina found herself adapting to life on land far better than she ever did at Fjord's Summer Palace. Fjord did not know her story and had not realised that she was a mermaid, but since Fritz had told Eric their story and he believed them, he had helped her with adapting to life on land, and also, unlike Fjord, Eric had someone teach her how to write so she could communicate, and she found herself writing what she wanted to say, though, even now, many of her written sentences were riddled with spelling mistakes, but that did not matter, since despite the mistakes, the messages' meanings were clear and also, Eric would correct her mistakes.

Learning about Eric, she had come to learn that his parents had died, which effectively made him the ruler of his kingdom, but the law of his kingdom stated that he could not officially inherit the title of King until he married, and unfortunately for the Kingdom, Eric was rather choosey over the type of girl he wanted, and he wanted to marry for love. He wanted to marry a girl; not for wealth or status, or to form a political alliance, but he wanted to marry someone who would love him for him and not because he was a prince. He wanted someone who shared his passions for the sea, and Eric took a very active role while at sea, helping the crewmen with their chores instead of confining himself to his cabin. He was happy and knew how ordinary people lived their lives, unlike Fjord, who from what Marina could gather, had been quite sheltered and only left the Summer Palace to see to his royal duties, and while at sea, Marina had not seen him help any of the crewmen with their chores. Yes, Eric may be a prince like Fjord, but he was also remarkably different from Fjord.

However, despite not being a victim of an arranged marriage like Fjord was, Eric was under pressure to find a wife and settle down, though, the laws of his kingdom were flexible in that Eric could practically marry anyone he chose regardless of their status, but the people of his kingdom, especially the nobility, were expecting him to choose a neighbouring kingdom's princess. Fortunately, they were not constantly hounding him and on his back. His confidant, Grimsby, in particular, respected his wishes and gave him his space, only bringing it up occasionally to remind him of the situation, and Marina knew that Eric could marry her if he chose, since there was no one in the way to object like Fjord's parents, who had insisted that he marry the Suomi Princess.

However, despite living together with Eric for the past six months, Marina just did not love him in that way. Sure, she cared for him and was thankful for everything he had done for her, but whenever she thought of Eric, he came across as something akin to an older brother, and she was relieved to learn that he felt the same way in that she was more like a little sister to him rather than a lover, and she had to hand it to Eric for his honesty. He had been the one who had come and told her that he did not wish to marry her, though, she could tell that he had been nervous and had obviously been anticipating a scene, but she had eased his fears in writing down that she felt the same way.

In truth, it was kind of like Fjord. He had told her that he had desired to marry the black-haired girl that found him on the shore, but he had given her a sense of hope when he said that since he did not know where she was, and figured that he would probably never meet her again, that he would rather marry her instead. That had filled her with hope, and in her own delusional little world, she was okay with that, but as it turned out, the Suomi Princess that Fjord's parents had chosen for him had turned out to be the Black-Haired Girl, and that had shattered her hope and woken her up to reality. Of course, as much as she wanted to be angry at Fjord, she found that she could not. After all, he had told her beforehand of his desire to marry the Black-Haired Girl and had only chosen to marry her because he could not find the Black-Haired Girl. He had told her that, and yet, she had completely ignored him, since she believed that he would never find her again. The possibility that he would find the black-haired girl never really entered her head, so when it turned out that the Suomi Princess was the Black-Haired Girl, it had come as quite a shock.

However, despite what Eric thought, Fjord had not been an "uncaring bastard" like he thought. In Marina's mind, he had just been rather stupid, and from the way he announced his marriage to her, it was clear that he still considered her a friend, though, Marina had to admit the irony of the situation. She had given up everything in the assumption that everything would turn out okay, without considering the possibility of something going wrong and had detached herself from reality, and the way Fjord had acted was the same. When he told her of his "good fortunate", the possibility that she had objections to his union with the Suomi Princess did not even enter his mind, just like the possibility of something going wrong never entering her own mind.

"Kind of ironic when you think about it," she thought to herself with a silent chuckle.

However, Eric had been quite forward with her and had told her that he would not marry her as the next best thing if he could not find his ideal girl, and while thinking about that, a thought just occurred to Marina. She had to wonder what would have happened if Fjord had succeeded in pushing past his parents' opposition to her, and they did marry, only for him to find the Black-Haired Girl. He did state that he only wanted to marry her because he could not find the black-haired girl. However, what would it have meant for her deal with Devillia if Fjord had married her, but discovered the Black-Haired Girl after their wedding?

Anyway, she was brought out of her thoughts as she noticed Eric and his dog, Max coming up behind her.

As for her relationship with Max, he absolutely adored her, unlike Fjord's cat, Jemmy, whom Marina quickly learned did not like her to say the least. Max, on the other hand, had grown quite fond of her, and she was the only one besides Eric that had gotten really close to him, and despite Marina being mute, she issued commands with her hands and he obeyed them as if they were coming from his master. That was something that Eric had noted, since Max usually was usually weary and shy round strangers. However, Marina had managed to set him at ease and even get him to follow her commands.

"Hey, are you okay?" Eric asked curiously, and Marina just nodded with a small smile on her face.

He then let out a smile of his own. In truth, he believed that Marina was a mermaid and he knew how she felt. He knew that she felt like she was being punished for her own stupidity. He had to admit that on the outlook, it did seem that Marina had no one to blame but herself for ending up in the situation she was in, but from the way Marina went around blaming herself, it was as if she believed that she had been some kind of heartless monster that had committed some unpardonable crime and that was not the case. Marina had just been stupid, nothing more, and he knew that when it came to Fritz, Marina's guilt only increased, and Eric knew that Fritz had not taken Marina's decision well, and in fact, it had torn him up on the inside, and Marina believed that she had cruelly abandoned him.

"That's not true," he thought to himself, knowing that it was pointless in trying to convince Marina otherwise, "I'll admit that it was stupid of you to go through with it, but you're not a heartless monster. You wouldn't be upset over it if you were."

"Fritz," Marina thought, as her mind wondered to her dolphin friend, "I'm so sorry for everything I've put you through. How can you still stomach me and go out of your way to help me. I abandoned you. I blew you off as if I didn't really need you anymore, and yet, you still stick by me, why?"

That much she believed to be the truth. She had ignored Fritz when he voiced his objections, and even though, one could argue that the reason it seemed that she had callously left him as he called out to her was due to her lack of a voice, she believed that she really had coldly and callously abandoned him. All their games in the past had been pretty childish, and upon earning the pearl hairpin, her days as a child were effectively over. Heck, she even stated as much in a song she had sang at her Coming-of-Age Ceremony, and she had to admit that the main reason she had hung around with Fritz was because she was bored, since she could not go to the surface and had been just passing time, but she had cared about Fritz, and before Fjord entered the picture, she had originally intended to take Fritz with her to the surface, but after Fjord entered the picture, all she thought about was him and everyone else ceased to matter to her. How Fritz could continue to stand by her and support her was a mystery. She would understand if he had abandoned her and left her to drown. In fact that's what she believed she deserved. Fritz would not abandon her in doing so, since, in her own mind, she had abandoned Fritz first.

Anyway, as Eric watched Marina, he nodded to himself as he resolved to help her realise that she was blowing her self-blame out of proportions. Sure, he did not wish to marry her, but he wanted her to be happy. The Mermaid rejected by the sea and forced to live on land as punishment for her stupidity. That was a bit much in Eric's opinion, and despite everything; her family and Fritz still loved her. Eric had met Marina's sisters a few times, and they still loved her despite everything, and were actually glad that Marina had spared the Prince, and Eric had to admit that, despite his anger over the Prince casting her aside in favour of his dream girl, he was glad as well, since like her sisters, he would probably be uncomfortable round her knowing that she had blood on her hands.

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><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong> – My latest story and I've decided to try something different from anime for a chance (not entire true since this is a crossover involving an anime). As you know, this is a crossover between two adaptations of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and just so you know it's a femslash story between Marina and Ariel. Also in the anime adaptation, I know that the Sea Witch was not given a name, but I gave her one to differentiate her from Ursula and as for the Prince's name in the anime adaptation, according to Wikipedia, Fjord is his name, though I'm sure that was probably a mistake since Fritz did mention the Fjord River, but for the purposes of this fic, his name is Fjord and he'll feature in a later chapter along with his wife, Cecilia (her name according to Wikipedia).


	2. Another Curious Little Mermaid

**Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids**

**Another Curious Little Mermaid**

**Disclaimer** – I do not own any of the characters from the Little Mermaid. The Walt Disney adaptation is the property of the Walt Disney Company, the anime adaptation is the property of Toei Animation and both adaptations are based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson.

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><p>Down in the depths of the North Sea, not far from the West Danish Coast, was the undersea kingdom of Atlantica, which was dominated by the Royal Palace, those tall structure and high-reaching spires dominated the seabed, as its golden sparkle shimmered in the sea, bathing the surrounding area in a beautiful golden glow. Even at night, one would have mistaken it to have been daytime due to the brightness of the glow, though, despite its name, it was not situated in the Atlantic Ocean. However, Atlantica's territorial waters were vast, covering the North Sea, the English Channel, the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, itself. The quickest way from the Atlantic Ocean to Atlantica would be to travel up via the English Channel, though, some travelled via the Northern Route between Scotland and the Isles of Orkney and Shetland or via the Arctic Ocean; it really depended on where the various mer-folk that inhabited the Atlantic Ocean lived.<p>

Anyway, whereas on the surface, Marina and Prince Eric reminisced over how they had come to meet, and in Marina's case, remember her own troubles, down in the depths of the sea, mer-folk from all across Atlantica's Waters were gathering in the main palace concert hall as a concert was being held in King Triton's honour in order to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the lifting of the ten-year music ban that had been in effect since after the death of Queen Athena.

The room, itself, was rather huge with a mixture of natural rock and manmade… or in this case, merman-made structures. The room was circular with the perimeter being merman-made. The walls were basically a rather deep brownish green colour with rather thin pillars that went up, forming huge arch-shaped gaps. There was also a smaller layer of arches with slightly wider pillars situated on top of the first layer and the arches on the second layer were considerably smaller than the ones that made up the first layer, and on top of that, was the roof with a chandelier in the centre. The walls also had carved decorations between the two layers of arches and also various colonies of purple algae were visible in places.

The audience all swam stationary in front of two rounded, bowl-shaped depressions, the first of which had various outcrops down inside it with one outcrop in front of it; this was where the conductor and band, that was made up of seven fish; three with coral stringed instruments, three with coral trumpets, and one with a coral saxophone and an octopus with an undersea drum kit were situated. The larger depression was seemingly empty and this represented the main stage, and behind it was a huge arch that was made up of natural rock and had vertical lines of rock running down the inside of the arch, mimicking bars, though, if one swam over to the "bars", the would find that they were too wide apart to be classed as bars. Anyway, the natural rock structures were littered inside the room, mostly behind the audience.

The audience, itself, was mainly made up of mer-folk, though, there were a few other sea creatures present as well, such as a few species of fish and a couple of dolphins. In the centre of the audience was none other than Princess Regatta and four of her five sisters. Aquaria was the second oldest and had purple hair and her hairstyle covered her left eye and she wore her pearl hairpin on the left side of her head near the back of her neck. Tida was the third oldest and had dark blue hair and was styled in the shape of a rather wide arch and her pearl hairpin was on the left of her head near the top and in the centre. Submara was the next one in the birth order and had orange hair with a small fringe over her forehead and wore a white hairband over the top of her head and her pearl hairpin was situated on top of and in the centre of her hairband, meaning that it was on top of her head. Corolla was the youngest; really, she was the second youngest, but the youngest one present and she had green hair styled in what was known in the modern day and age as an afro, and was rather bushy looking, and she wore her pearl hairpin on the right side of her head in stark contrast to her sisters and also, the shade of her hair was dependant on how much light shone on it; the more light then the lighter the shade and the less light, the darker the shade.

Unfortunately for Corolla, much to her chagrin, because of the style and colour of her hair, she often ended up being teased by her older sisters, and since her hair resembled a bush, she had earned the nickname, "Bush-Head", and her sisters enjoyed teasing her; especially now since Marina was no longer around.

"Damn you, Marina," she thought, feeling rather miffed as she thought about her, now human, little sister, "I don't care how much I love you, if you ever somehow manage to become a mermaid again, you'll pay for leaving me to become the new victim of the others' constant teasing."

As for what happened to Marina, all the sisters were in an agreement. In all honestly, they had been rather shocked and surprised at first. It was the day after Marina's Coming-of-Age Ceremony when they noticed that she had gone missing, and then, Fritz had come along, rather heartbroken and explained to them what had happened; that Marina had fallen in love with the human she had rescued from that storm, and had gone to the Sea Witch, Devillia Del Ray, and had become a human in order to be with him.

Naturally, this had come as a massive shock to them, and in truth; they all felt rather infuriated and betrayed. It had really infuriated them that their little sister had abandoned and discarded them in order to be with someone she did not really know. She hardly knew the Prince and had not spoken a single word to him, and yet, she had gone and become human, just like that; as if that's what the Prince had wanted. It was clear that Marina had been clearly going on assumptions and the fact that she had never discussed it with any of them beforehand was what hurt the most. She had just assumed that they would agree and accept the situation with no objections whatsoever and had not considered the possibility that they had objections in the first place.

However, despite their anger and feelings of betrayal, Marina was still their little sister, and there was just something about Marina in that that they just could not stay mad with her for long, and so, with that in mind, they had all made periodic visits to the Summer Palace to check up on Marina, though, they never confronted her over the issue, feeling that they would have allowed their anger to get the best of them if they had.

However, Fritz had also informed them of the consequences that would befall Marina if the Prince did not reciprocate her feelings and married another, and that had them all worried, since none of them had wanted to lose their little sister, but unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened, and Marina had soon found herself in a massive quandary, of which there seemed to be no way out of.

However, in desperation, they had all gone to Devillia, against their better judgement, and pretty much demanded that she do something to save Marina, and Devillia had surprisingly agreed to help them, but at the cost of their long hair. She gave them a magical knife and instructed them to give it to Marina, and she explained that Marina had to plunge the knife into the Prince's heart, and that when his blood touched her feet, her legs would join together and become a tail and she would be transformed into a mermaid again, but stated that she would be keeping her voice to teach her a lesson in how she should not make risky deals with shady characters over matters she had no control over.

Nonetheless, despite their misgivings over it, since it meant that Marina would have to take someone's life in order to become a mermaid again, they had agreed, knowing that further negotiation with Devillia would be pointless. Despite everything, all the sisters hated the deal and did not want anyone to die. Sure, they could easily blame the Prince for their sister's troubles, and for a while, most of them did blame him until Regatta pointed out that the prince had no idea that Marina existed until he found her by the riverbank, and Marina had made the decision to become human herself, with the Prince having no say in it whatsoever. However, none of the sisters had really wanted the Prince to die, but their desperation to have their sister back had ultimately won out in the end, and so, they had confronted Marina and explained the situation.

However, as it turned out, Marina did indeed learn her lesson. That was proven when she could not bring herself to kill the Prince and elected to dissolve into sea foam instead. She could have killed the Prince and returned to being a mermaid, but instead, she had chosen not to, believing that killing the Prince for her own benefit was selfish and would have proven that she had learned nothing at all. She still loved the Prince and had decided that his happiness was her happiness. She wanted him to be happy and put his well-being ahead of her own. In short, she had learned the meaning of true love and that had relieved her sisters, since despite agreeing to the deal with Devillia, none of them wanted their little sister to have blood on her hands, and they all knew that it would have ultimately devastated her in the end if she had gone through with it.

However, as if, by some intervention of fate, Marina, for whatever reason, had not turned to sea foam come sunrise, which caused her sisters to breathe a sigh of relief, since they still had their sister, but unfortunately, the law had stated that she had to be banished, and so, their father, King Kraken of Mediterranea, had banished her, though, he allowed them to go and visit her, since there was nothing in the law that said they were forbidden from seeing her, and so, they abused that loophole regularly, and with their father and grandmother's blessings. They had discovered that Marina had been taken in by yet another human prince, but unlike the last one, he was a lot more considerate towards Marina, and despite not being in love with her, Prince Eric continued to house her in his palace. Sure, they knew Eric was not in love with Marina, but that did not matter to them, since he continued to look after their sister, and unlike the other prince, Eric had made no illusion that he was in love with Marina; he had been very straight and forward with her, but regardless, Marina still stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go.

It was a funny story how they met. Regatta chuckled as she thought about it. From what she was told, a few hours into their exile, after being escorted to Mediterranea's border with Atlantica,, Marina and Fritz had been caught in fishing nets, and the ship's crewmen were going to kill Fritz, believing that he was some sort of demon and that they were saving Marina from his "influence", since not many humans were aware that animals could talk and Fritz had spoken and therefore, the ship's crew assumed that he was a demon of some kind, but Eric had intervened and, being more understanding and open-minded than the rest of the ship's crew, he had released Fritz back into the sea, and had agreed to house Marina. Regatta remembered when she and her sisters met Prince Eric and had continued to meet with him a few more times after that, and he did come across as a charming and nice man. He was also very friendly with animals and he told them of his situation, and that despite not falling in love with Marina, he would continue to house her indefinitely, since she had nowhere else to go and he just could not throw her out into the streets, for which they were grateful to him for.

In any case, they were all currently at the concert because they were visiting Marina, and since Marina was out at sea, they needed something to occupy themselves with while they waited for her to return to land. Of course, they could easily go looking for her at sea, but then, they ran the risk of the crewmen of Eric's ship seeing them, and it was forbidden for mer-folk and humans to socialise. Of course, Eric was an exception, but none of the sisters felt that the crewmen could be trusted with keeping knowledge of their existence a secret and knew that there were quite a few humans that would look to capture them if they knew of the existence of mer-folk, and with that in mind, they decided that it was too risky to approach Marina while she was at sea.

"I still can't believe that Triton lifted the music ban that he had in place," Tida was saying to Aquaria, as Regatta was brought out of her thoughts, "I wonder what happened."

Regatta nodded as she overheard her sister. She had to admit that that did interest her. Whenever they came to visit Marina, they knew that they were crossing the border into Atlantican Waters, which King Triton ruled. In the past, Mediterranea and Atlantica had rather strong ties, and in the past, Triton and Kraken were similar in personality. The reason for those strong ties was due to Kraken's wife, Hera's close friendship with Queen Athena. Hera had been an ambassador to Atlantica, and she had often brought her daughters along with her, though, that had been so long ago that the Mediterranean Princesses had all mostly forgotten; only vaguely remembering bits and pieces of their memories, but Regatta had a few clear memories of her excursions to Atlantica.

She and her sisters had all been intrigued at the differences between Atlantican mer-folk and Mediterranean mer-folk. Atlantican mer-folk's tails were a variety of different colours. Each mer-person had their own tail colour and their caudal fins, as well at the fin situated on the borderline between tail and upper body were always a lighter shade of their tail colour. By comparison, Mediterranean mer-folk all mostly had greyish blue tails that sometimes appeared greyish green whenever certain types of light shone on them. Also, Mediterranean mer-folk did not have a fin-like borderline between their tails and upper bodies and instead had a line of light blue scales and above that a line of pink scales round their waists that acted as a borderline. The caudal fins of Atlantican and Mediterranean mer-folk were also different. The caudal fins of Atlantican mer-folk were wide, long, almost transparent and could bend and be rolled up easily, whereas the caudal fins of Mediterranean mer-folk were the same shade as the rest of their tails, a lot smaller, thinner and incredibly stiff and could not be bent or rolled up easily.

Also, another fundamental difference between the two types of mer-folk was that Atlantican mermaids tended to wear seashell bras over their breasts and normally, those seashells were the same colour as their tails, but there were a few exceptions, whereas Mediterranean mermaids all mostly had naturally long hair and relied on it to cover their modesty.

However, this difference in culture did lead to a few complaints from Mediterranean tourists, who had been arrested for indecent exposure in the past, since by Atlantican law, all mermaids were required to wear seashell bras to cover their modesty, and since the Mediterranean mermaids where in Atlantican Territory, they were required to obey Atlantican Law, and so, to solve this problem, at each border checkpoint between Atlantica and Mediterranea, there was a store dedicated to selling seashell bras, and all Mediterranean mermaids were required by law to purchase one if they wanted to enter Atlantican Waters. In fact, Regatta and her sisters were all wearing seashell bras and each one was the same colour as their wearer's hair. In any case, no Mediterranean mermaid was allowed into Atlantican Waters unless she purchased a seashell bra, but Atlantican mermaids travelling to Mediterranea were not required to remove there seashell bras.

"Kinda stupid if you ask me, but the law's the law," Regatta thought with a chuckle, as she mused over how ridiculous it was; Mediterranean mermaids could only come and go from Atlantica whenever they pleased so long as they have a seashell bra and yet, Atlantican mermaids could come and go as they pleased from Mediterranea without fulfilling any obligation whatsoever.

As far as Mediterranean mermaids were concerned, their long hair was enough, and even though, she and her sisters had lost theirs to Devillia, their hair had rather quickly grown back in the past six months, but they still wore the seashell bras in order to comply with Atlantican Law.

Nonetheless, unfortunately, Queen Athena had been killed eleven years ago during an excursion to the surface, and as a result, King Triton had become rather bitter, banning music from his kingdom, and had also developed a xenophobic hatred for humans, blaming them for Athena's death, and not long after that, Hera died in an accident, and as a result, Kraken and Triton had become so divided in their opinions of the surface world; Triton growing to hate the surface world, whereas Kraken still maintained his neutral stance on the issue of humans that they had severed ties with one another.

However, fortunately, Triton and Kraken had agreed not to drag the people of their respective kingdoms into their falling out, so despite them both not talking to one another, the ordinary mer-folk were allowed to travel between the two kingdoms as they pleased, and there were a few business deals that crossed the border; just so long as it had nothing to do with Triton or Kraken, they were quite happy to allow their respective peoples to do as they pleased. In fact, the five princesses had noticed that they were not the only Mediterraneans in attendance. There were quite a few marriages between Atlantican and Mediterranean mer-folk, and Regatta noticed that the majority of other Mediterranean mer-folk in attendance were with Atlantican mer-folk.

Anyway, before she could ponder on this further, behind the audience, a group of trumpet fish with red bodies, pink heads, bluish grey fins and wearing sashes, each first one wearing a purple sash and each second one wearing a yellow sash all lined out and stood at attention, closing their eyes as they played their trumpet-like noses. To their left, a small orange seahorse wearing a ruffle collar came out with a professional and calm look on his face.

"A-ha-ahem, His Royal Highness, King Triton," the little seahorse declared, as he held his pectoral fins up to his left and then a fanfare started playing as three dolphins swam out from between two pillars of natural rock structures with a ledge beneath the front.

Anyway, the three dolphins emerged and were pulling a shell chariot that was made from the top of a turtle's shell and in the shell chariot, holding onto the reins of the three dolphins was a really old, though, heavily muscular and well-built merman with long white hair that went down to the bottom of the back of his stomach and also had at heavily set moustache and beard that ran down to the top of his abdomen. He also had grey eyebrows that were slowly turning white, but had not become as white as the rest of his hair and also had an aqua blue tail and dark blue eyes. He wore two golden gauntlets on his arms that ran from his wrists up to his elbows and which were decorated with ovular bumps. On the top of his head was a five-pronged golden crown, and in his right hand, he wielded a golden three-pronged trident that started to glow and hum as the three dolphins moved to the right of the crowd and circled round the room.

The people all cheered wildly as King Triton himself had graced them with his presence and the three dolphins pulling his chariot suddenly swam to the left and to the centre of the room, and Triton's trident started to emit golden sparks, and as he passed underneath the chandelier, he gently thrust his trident towards it, sending the sparks towards the chandelier, which then deflected them down onto the crowd, who all still continued to cheer.

"My, he's getting on a bit, isn't he?" Submara whispered to her sisters, "Didn't he have borwnish red hair the last time we saw him?"

"That was over eleven years ago," Tida replied with a shrug, "Besides, I can't quite remember what he actually looked like. Wasn't his hair more a brownish orange colour?"

"Yeah... well, I'm not sure about his hair, but wasn't there this small red crab that we used to swim ragged?" Corolla asked curious, as she seemed to vaguely recall a few of her memories.

"Shush!" Regatta scolded, as the fanfare slowly died down.

"And presenting, the distinguished Court Composer, Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian," the little seahorse went on as he held up his pectoral fins to a different opening that was made up of natural rock structures on each side.

A kazoo-like instrument started playing, as two small goldfish appeared hauling in a small red crab that was mounted to a small, blue, segmented and round snail-like shell emerged. The shell itself had four rounded segments; one huge one at the front and the other three were each smaller than the one that to its right and the last one came to a cone-shaped point. The crab, Sebastian was situated in a hard and solid pouch like appendix at the left end of the shell with only his front pair of legs hanging over the top of the "pouch".

The crowd, instead of cheering like they had done when Triton had emerged, only gave him a rather mild round of applause as he waved his right pincer at them and blew a kiss.

"That's him," Corolla whispered with a snigger, "He's the one we constantly swam circles around."

"Yeah, I remember him," Aquaria whispered with a snigger of her own, "I swear, if he had hair, he'd probably have pulled it all out by the time we were finished with him."

"I thought only hermit crabs took other animals' shells," Submara giggled jokingly, as she mocked the little red crab's shell carriage.

"Well, maybe he's become confused as to what species of crab he is," Tida joked with a giggle.

However, suddenly, the two goldfish that were pulling him suddenly shot off and Sebastian tightened his hold on the reins as he felt as if his steads almost pulled him out of the shell that he was using as his carriage. However, the two fish came to an abrupt halt before rearing up and making a sound similar to a horse, and before Sebastian could recover, they suddenly burst off again, swimming upwards at an arc as they brought Sebastian right up beside Triton.

"How much you want to bet that this'll end in disaster?" Corolla challenged with a rather mischievous and challenging grin, as she faced her sisters.

Regatta shook her head with a somewhat agitated look on his face.

"Behave yourselves!" she warned sternly, "We're guests here. We maybe princesses, but we are not in our home kingdom, and as such, I suggest that you all knock it off and set an example."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Submara said dismissively, clearly not really caring, which only caused her sister to let out a rather frustrated sigh.

* * *

><p>Up with Sebastian and Triton, Triton smiled as he turned to regard the Court Composer, who, as it turned out, was also his most trusted advisor and number two.<p>

"I'm really looking forward to this performance, Sebastian," the Atlantican Sea King said in a voice filled with anticipation.

"Oh, Your Majesty, dis will be de finest concert I have ever conducted," Sebastian replied with a laugh in a Caribbean accent, as Triton came to the ledge in front of where he had made his entrance and then released his hold on the reins, causing the three dolphins to swim off as his shell chariot landed on the ledge, "Your daughters, dey will be spectacular."

However, just then, the two goldfish became impatient and started to shoot off again, only for Sebastian and pull back on the reins, but they had almost succeeded in completely pulling him out of the shell, and it flipped upside down, much to the Sea King's amusement.

"Yes, especially my little Ariel," Triton said with a laugh as he leaned closer to Sebastian with his arm over his chest and his hand at the side of his mouth and as for Sebastian, he had heard his liege's comment even as he climbed on top of his shell and turning it right-side up.

"Yes, yes, she has de most beautiful voice," Sebastian said in agreement, as he got back into his "pouch", and with a yank of the reins, caused the two fish to slowly move forward as the sound of stringed instruments tuning up started to flood the room.

Triton just chuckled in amusement as his number two's slight misfortunate with his steeds.

"If only she'd show up for rehearsals once in a while," Sebastian went on quietly, as he grumbled to himself in frustration, as he thought about Ariel's conduct in the past.

He swore that Triton's youngest daughter, Ariel, would be the death of him. Her main problem, the red crab concluded, was that she did not act in the way that he felt a Princess of Atlantica should act. Sure, she was the youngest and the chances of her six sisters all dying and her inheriting the throne were almost non-existent, but she was still a princess of the Atlantica and Sebastian felt that she should act like one. Besides, it was partially because of her that the music ban had been lifted when he had been arrested for attending an underground music club, and she had broken him out of jail and they both journeyed together, and Ariel had found an old music box that her father had made for her mother.

However, back then, Sebastian had a rivalry with Marina Del Rey, a mermaid who had been the governess of Triton's seven daughters, and it had been her who had revealed the existence of the music club to Triton when she followed Ariel and her sisters when she showed them where it was, and had gotten him arrested and all because she could have his job as Triton's attaché and number two. Anyway, after Ariel broke him and his band, the Catfish Club Band out, Marina resolved to kill them and led an army of electric eels, and Ariel saved his life from Marina, which Triton had seen and it was after Ariel returned the music box to him, which he had thrown away himself that he had decided to lift the ban and so, this concert was also in much in honour of Ariel, herself, due to her role in having the music ban lifted.

However, unfortunately, Ariel hardly ever showed up for rehearsals, and when she did, she was usually late. She did not appear to take anything relating to her obligations as a princess and the affairs of the Kingdom seriously, and was far too curious and adventurous for Sebastian's liking. To him, Ariel seemed to have skewed priorities, believing that her adventures were more important than this concert or her duties as a princess, and she always seemed to be off in her own little world. In fact, the number of times that Ariel had actually carried out her duties and took anything seriously could be counted on one hand, and it riled Sebastian something terrible that Ariel would rather be off doing who knew what rather than fulfilling her obligations.

Nonetheless, putting his troubles with Ariel to the back of his mind, the two goldfish hauled Sebastian's shell carriage down to the outcrop at the top of the small depression, which was obviously the conductor's podium.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Corolla," Aquaria whispered to her green-haired sister, as Sebastian's shell carriage made its way down to the podium as a spotlight from high up in the ceiling shone down on him and followed the shell's movements, "You know that you were wondering if something was going to go wrong? Well, I'll take that bet."<p>

"Quiet!" Regatta scolded in a hushed voice with a glare levelled at the rest of her sisters.

* * *

><p>When Sebastian's shell carriage reached the podium, he released the reins of the two goldfish and they both swam off as the shell descended down to the far edge of the podium nearest the audience. Once the shell had landed, Sebastian stood up on the edge of the "pouch" and brought his pincers, or "claws", as he referred to them as, up to the top edge of his own natural shell and adjusted it slightly as if her were adjusting a shirt collar, and then, he adjusted his shell at the back, and then, he reached down inside the shell carriage and after a brief struggle, he pulled out a set of music sheets, and then, he brought them to the front of the podium that was curved upwards and placed it down before looking over the top, and then, he swam upwards slightly as he took a small black baton and tapped the side of the podium, and then, he started waving it in front of the band, which started to play a rather fast and upbeat tune that probably would have been mistaken for a children's tune.<p>

As the intro concluded, three clams sitting on top of fake coral branches and coral plants beside them rose up from the huge depression and as the intro completely concluded the middle clam opened followed by the one to its left, and then, the one to its right opened and each clam revealed two mermaids inside each.

"Ah, we are the daughters of Triton," they all started to sing as their respective clam opened, "Great father, who loves us and named us well…"

At hearing this, Triton raised his posture somewhat boastfully with his arms folded as he beamed with pride over his daughters.

"Attina, Alana, Adella, Aquata, Arista, Andrina…" they continued to sing as each individual mermaid swam above the others and sang a few ah notes as their name was mentioned, and Sebastian swam higher and higher with a rather proudly happy look on his face as he witnessed his composition come together.

"And then there is the youngest, in her musical debut," the sisters all continued to sing as they brought their heads together in a circle as a fourth clam rose up behind them and on either side of the clam were blue fake coral plants that were rotating downwards, "Our seventh little sister, we're presenting her to you…"

As they continued to sing, they all swam towards the clam and circled it and ushered their hands towards it in a presenting gesture.

"To sing a song Sebastian wrote, her voice is like a bell," they went on singing, as Sebastian, upon hearing the mentioning of his name, turned to face the audience with a rather proud, cheesy and somewhat smug and arrogant grin on his face, and from up where he was, Triton looked on with a smile of anticipation as he could not wait to hear his youngest sing, "She's our sister, Ari…"

However, when the clam opened up, aside from a huge blue pillow, the clam was empty, causing everyone to gasp in shock and Sebastian unwittingly threw away his baton as a shocked look of disbelief washed over his face.

"Their sister, the No-Show," Sebastian heard someone in the audience whisper, though, despite their efforts to keep quiet, their voice was still loud enough to carry over the entire room.

"I guess you win the bet, eh, Corolla," another voice came, causing Sebastian to turn and glare into the audience, and he gasped when he noticed that in attendance were five of six mermaids that he thought he would never have to deal with again.

"What are dey doin' 'ere?" he thought to himself, as memories of how the six Princesses of Mediterranea had swam circles round him as he tried to look after them eleven years ago assaulted his mind.

Unlike the five sisters, whose memories were vague and only clearly recalled bits and pieces, Sebastian, unfortunately, remembered everything they had done to him as clear as day. Not only did they swim him ragged, but he had become their unwilling personal butt monkey, proverbial chew toy and plaything, and had become the butt of their jokes, and unfortunately, it still caused him to shiver every time he thought about it.

"Yes, I guess I do," Corolla said in reply to her sister, whom Sebastian recognised as Aquaria, "But I wonder why the seventh… what's her name…?"

"Ariel, I think I remember it being Ariel," the blue-haired mermaid, that Sebastian remembered as Tida, said as she looked in his direction with a rather boastful smirk.

"Dey haven't changed one bit," Sebastian scoffed angrily, as he shot them a glare, though, if he had been paying attention, he would have realised that Regatta was the only one not participating, and in fact, had a hand over her face as she shook her head in sheer embarrassment.

"Ah, yes," Corolla went on, "I have to wonder why Princess Ariel never showed up."

"Maybe she's embarrassed at taking directions from such a short stack," the orangette, that Sebastian knew to be Submara, suggested as she rather rudely pointed at Sebastian, who gasped at the insult about his small size, and in truth, he felt rather hurt.

"Are you sure?" Tida said in a tone of mock shock, as she looked in Sebastian's direction.

"Of course, I mean look at him, he's so small, it'll be rather easy to squish him," Submara laughed, as Sebastian shot the five sisters a rather insulted and hurt glare.

"Yeah and what about his name, what's with that?" Corolla put in, as she looked at Sebastian, "Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian, what sort of name is that? One might come to the conclusion that he's perhaps compensating for something, since it's so long."

"Yeah, I'll have to agree with you there," Aquaria said before they all, with the exception of Regatta, burst into laughter.

Unfortunately, despite their efforts to keep quiet, their voices had still echoed throughout the room, and so, the rest of the audience had heard them and when they burst into laughter, the audience joined in as they all laughed and rather rudely pointed at Sebastian, who was seething with fury over having been insulted, hurt and humiliated by the foreign princesses. If he was not already red in colour, then he would have been red in the face, though, anyone who noticed him may have noticed that the shade of red in his face had darkened considerably.

Unfortunately, Sebastian was not the only one who was enraged, as Triton grabbed his trident, which started to glow and hum dangerously and the glow reflected off his eyes, giving them a rather, sinisterly dark brownish red colour that seemed to match his mood perfectly.

"ARIEL!" he roared in seething rage, as he leaned towards the empty clam.

That caught the audience's attention, and the King's change in mood caused them all to stop laughing as they all backed away nervously.

Regatta swam over to Sebastian with the intention of apologising to him for her sisters' behaviour, knowing that they had rather brashly and uncaringly hurt his feelings. Sure she had to admit that back when they were children, they were young and stupid and did not know any better. However, nowadays, they were a lot older and Regatta would have liked to have thought that they were more mature and had grown out of that sort of behaviour. Unfortunately, with her sisters, it seemed that she had figured wrong, and she just knew that she was going to be in for an earful from Sebastian, since she knew that he would automatically associate her with her sisters.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, while Regatta and the rest of her sisters were occupied with the concert, Fritz was currently following Triton's seventh daughter, Ariel and her tropical fish friend, Flounder. Ever since he had been charged with looking after Marina, he had effectively been banished along with her, and since she had been taken in by Prince Eric, the young dolphin calf found that he had nothing to do most of the time, though, he did visit Marina occasionally… well, Marina often came down to the shoreline from Eric's palace and Fritz knew that it would not do him any good to lie and wait all the time, since he knew that he would have eventually succumbed to starvation, and so, he had decided that while Marina was occupied on land, he would find something to occupy himself with as well, and if Marina ever wanted to see him, she would do as Fritz instructed her to when he first came to see her at the Prince's Summer Palace and hold up her Pearl Hairpin into the air and it would send out a signal that Fritz somehow managed to receive.<p>

Anyway, while exploring the local area, he had long since come across Princess Ariel and he had to say that he was astounded at just how similar to Marina she was. Like Marina, she was the youngest of many sisters, though, unlike Marina, who had five sisters, Ariel had six, and also, like Marina, Ariel had a curiosity about the surface world.

However, whereas their curiosities were similar, the circumstances behind those curiosities could not have been more different, and as a result, despite their similarities, Ariel and Marina were also different. Whereas Marina's curiosity was piqued by her sisters being able to go to the surface before her, and them telling her stories of their excursions, since she could not go because she had not come of age, Ariel was also forbidden from going to the surface, but unlike Marina, it was not because she had not become of age; it was because her father, King Triton seemed to possess a deep-seeded hatred for humans and forbade all his daughters from going to the surface, fearing that they could be seen.

Unfortunately for him, this stance only served to have the opposite effect on his youngest daughter, since instead of deterring her, the fact that he forbade her from going to the surface only served to fuel her curiosity, and the more he tried to enforce it, the more curious Ariel became. Fritz could honestly say that he had not yet have seen King Triton, but from what she heard from Ariel, it was clear that their differences in opinion often caused them to clash.

Anyway, Fritz had never gained the courage to approach Ariel, fearful that in befriending her, he was somehow abandoning and betraying Marina. Of course, he knew that if he explained the situation to Ariel, then it would obviously be inevitable that she would want to meet Marina, and given her father's attitude towards the surface, he did not want to get the Atlantican Princess into trouble, since he still remembered how Marina's father saw him as a bad influence on his daughter, and he also feared what Triton would do to Marina; especially if he found out that she had originally been a mermaid, and so, with that in mind, he kept his distance and just observed.

Anyway, Ariel, herself was a green-tailed mermaid with long fiery red hair and blue eyes and she wore a purple seashell bra, and had an orange bag currently slung over her right shoulder, and she was currently looking down at a shipwreck from the mast of another sunken ship, looking over the horizontal part that normally held the sail up. Looking around, Fritz could safely say that they were in a sunken ship graveyard, since this part of the seabed was littered with sunken wrecks; many of which, Ariel had explored before.

"Brings back memories," he thought to himself, as he remembered how he and Marina used to explore sunken ships in the aftermath of Devillia's storms.

* * *

><p>"Ariel, wait for me!" a voice that Fritz recognised as belonging to Ariel's own companion, Flounder called out from behind her.<p>

"Flounder, hurry up," Ariel said with a small glare as she motioned her hand in a "Come here" gesture and Flounder, himself, came swimming towards Ariel, flipping his caudal fin from side to side really quickly as he swam as fast as he could, and was looking rather exhausted as he panted for breath.

"You know I can't swim that fast," he panted, as he came up behind his mermaid friend.

Flounder, himself was yellow in colour with four blue streaks running down his sides from his back down to the middle of his sides. He also had blue fins that were two different shades of blue. His pectoral fins had a light shade of blue at their sides and a darker shade of blue running down the centre as a thick stripe. His caudal find was also light blue with two thinner stripes of dark blue and the same was true for his dorsal fin that ran from the top of his head right down to his caudal fin, getting smaller the closer it came to the caudal fin. At the front of his dorsal fin were three lose strands attached to it, but looked more like strands of human hair than part of his dorsal fin, and he also had green eyes.

"There it is," Ariel said after gasping, as she pointed down to a shipwreck that sat on a small outcrop on the seabed as the sunlight shone partial on its stern, "Isn't it fantastic?"

"Sure, i-it's great," Flounder replied in unenthusiastic agreement, clearly more scared than curious, since he had no idea just what was lurking within the graveyard, and was afraid that they would run into danger, "Now let's get outta here."

He then turned and started to swim off, but Ariel just sighed as she grabbed him by the tail and started to swim towards the shipwreck with Flounder's tail still in her hand.

"You're not getting cold fins now, are you?" she said in a slightly frustrated tone, and Fritz had to admit that this was another difference between Ariel and Marina.

"Who me?" Flounder said, trying to sound braver than he actually was, as Ariel released him once she had gotten closer to the shipwreck, "No way, it's just… it uh…"

He then swam after Ariel as he continued to think of a plausible excuse to explain his unease.

"It looks damp in there," he went on, as an excuse finally came to him, "Yeah, and, yeah, I think I may be coming down with something."

He then placed his pectoral fin on his head as if it were a hand in a stereotypical human thinking stance as he considered how to proceed.

"Yeah, I got this cough," he finally said, as he swam after Ariel, who was looking through a porthole on the side of the ship, and as if to emphasise his point, he gave a rather unconvincing cough.

"Okay, I'm going inside," Ariel said after looking in through the porthole, and then, she turned to her friend and gave him a rather teasingly, somewhat smug smile, "You can just stay here and watch for sharks."

"Okay," Flounder said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, as Ariel swam inside through the porthole, "Okay, you go, I'll stay…"

However, just then, what Ariel had said suddenly hit him, and a panicked look materialised on his face as he realised that he was terrified of sharks.

"What, sharks!" he said in alarm, as he flipped his caudal fin and tried to enter through the porthole, "Ariel!"

* * *

><p>From where he was, Fritz also shuddered at the prospect of encountering a shark. In the past whenever he and Marina were out playing and exploring, they never had to worry about the possibility of a shark attack, since most sharks tended to stay away from Mediterranean Waters, and those that did not, were usually from the more peaceful and placid species of sharks. However, he had to remind himself that this was Atlantican Territory, and as such, the more dangerous species of sharks were much more common and listening to Flounder's panic also set him at unease.<p>

* * *

><p>However, unfortunately for Flounder, he was too fat to fit through the porthole and ended up getting stuck.<p>

"Ariel… I can't… I mean…" Flounder said, as struggled to get through, but unfortunately he was unable to make much progress even as he pushed his pectoral fins against the wall as if they were human hands, "Ariel, help!"

Fortunately, Ariel had not gotten far, and upon hearing her friend's cry for help, turned and swam back to the porthole.

"Oh, Flounder," Ariel said with a teasing laugh, as she grabbed his pectoral fins and gently tugged at them.

"Ariel, do you really think there might be sharks around here?" Flounder whispered, as Ariel continued to pull at his pectoral fins, but unbeknownst to either of them or Fritz, who had gone to find another way into the ship, the shadow of a great white shark passed over the porthole as one swam by.

"Flounder, don't be such a guppy," Ariel said teasingly.

"I'm not a guppy," Flounder said, as he gave one almighty push and Ariel managed to pull him in.

* * *

><p>"Don't be so sure, little mermaid," the Shark, who was on the outside of the ship said quietly, "You and your little guppy friend will make tasty new additions to the inside of my stomach."<p>

* * *

><p>Once inside, both of them swam down into the cargo hold of the ship.<p>

"This is great," Flounder said, trying to be brave as he slowed down and started to look around, as Ariel swam on ahead of him, "I mean, I… uh… really love this… ha, ha, excitement, adventure, danger lurking around every corn…"

However, he then let out a panicked scream and backed away as he turned and saw that he was right up in the face of a human skeleton, and ploughed right into a support beam that was unfortunately unstable, and Flounder dislodged it, causing part of the ceiling to cave in.

"Ariel!" he screamed, as he quickly swam away from the falling debris, and swam right into Ariel's stomach and she put her arms round him and fell on her back, but quickly recovered as Flounder continued to shiver in terror.

"Oh, are you okay?" Ariel asked in genuine concern, as Flounder continued to shiver, scared out of his wits, even as he started to calm down.

Despite constantly teasing him whenever he was acting rather cowardly and fearful, Flounder was still her friend, and as such, she cared for him very much and did not intend to take her teasing of him too far and insult him.

"Sure, no problem, I'm okay," he whispered simply in response to her comment, and then, Ariel brought her index finger to her mouth.

"Shush," she said simply before she swam up through the hole that Flounder had unwittingly made, and found herself in one of the ship's cabins.

Flounder followed Ariel, and once she was inside the cabin, she placed her hand on the floor as she came up through the hole and started to look around and her eyes widened in excitement as she eyed a three-pronged dinner fork lying on the floor.

"Oh my gosh," she said in a rather excited tone, as she came up and swam towards it, "Oh my gosh, have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life?"

"Cool," Flounder said excitedly, briefly forgetting about his fear, as he rubbed his pectoral fins together as if they were human hands and Ariel picked up the fork, and he swam over to see it for himself, "But… uh, what is it?"

"I don't know," Ariel said with a laugh, as she placed the fork in her bag, unaware of the Shark that just swam by outside, "But I bet Scuttle will."

"What was that?" Flounder said, as he heard something outside and all of a sudden, his fear returned with alarming intensity.

Unfortunately, Ariel was too caught up in her own excitement to notice, and upon noticing something else; she swam over to see what it was.

"Did you hear something?" Flounder said, as he swam closer to the ship's window in order to get a closer look as to what was outside as he suddenly got a really dreadful feeling that they were not alone.

"Hmm, I wonder what this one is," Ariel said, as she picked up a smoking pipe, unaware of her friend's increasing sense of alarm.

"Ariel," Flounder said with increasingly panicking alarm clear in his voice, even as the Shark rose up from outside the window behind him and opened its mouth.

"Flounder, will you relax?" Ariel said with a hint of frustration in her voice, having had enough of her friend's supposed paranoia, "Nothing's going to happen."

However, even as Ariel was talking, Flounder noticed the shadow behind him and turned, and terror flooded his mind as he noticed the Shark's open mouth as it lunged towards him and chomped down, as he quickly swam away as the Shark burst through the window.

"AAAHHH, SHARK, SHARK!" he screamed, catching Ariel's attention as terror overwhelmed him as the Shark followed him, but banged its head against the ceiling as Flounder swam to the left and right into Ariel, accidentally pushing her up against the wall of the ship "WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"Hi there," the Shark said in a sinister tone and a big toothy smile, as it suddenly swam towards Ariel, repeatedly chomping down on its teeth, as Ariel quickly pushed a table aside with her tail and swam out in front of her even as the shark came into the wall and was forced to make a turn.

Upon encountering the wall on the opposite end of the cabin, Ariel veered to the left, causing the Shark to slam into it as it could not turn quickly enough to avoid the collision. However, Ariel and Flounder both ignored the Shark as they swam up to the next floor of the ship above the cabin. However, they did not get very far when the Shark suddenly burst through the floor boards, and Flounder let out another terrified scream.

"Don't worry, little mermaid," the Shark said in a tauntingly sweet tone, "I'm not going to hurt you; I'm just going to acquaint you with the inside of my stomach."

The Shark then opened his mouth and chomped down as Ariel and Flounder both quickly turned and swam in the opposite direction with the Shark chasing them as it munched down on the floor while chasing after them, and all the while, Flounder just could not stop screaming.

Unfortunately, Ariel was swimming so quickly that her bag got snagged on a piece of wood sticking up from the floor and after a brief moment, in which she debated on whether or not she should risk going back for it, she turned and swam back, deciding that she was not going to lose what she had just found and fortunately, she managed to retrieve it and swim away before the Shark reached her, though, it was a close call and she escaped through a small hole in the ceiling that was just wide enough for her to fit through.

"Come 'ere!" the Shark demanded, as he tried to follow her, but ended up banging his head off the ceiling, but instead of giving up, he gave the ceiling an almighty bang, bursting through it in the pursuit of his prey.

Meanwhile, Ariel had managed to catch up with Flounder, who was swimming towards a set of portholes.

"Oh no!" he said in a panicked tone, as he remembered how much of a struggle it had been to get through, even with Ariel's help, but nonetheless, he swam right up to the middle porthole and got his head caught, but fortunately Ariel quickly managed to push him through before making her own exit.

However, not one to be deterred from catching his prey, the Shark burst through the wall of the ship.

"Get back here, you little maggots!" the Shark roared with rage, "You're both going into my stomach and that's all there is to it!"

Flounder started to scream again as they swam round one of the ship's mast poles, and unfortunately, they were swimming so fast that Flounder slammed into one of the horizontal masts and started to fall towards the seabed with a dazed look on his face, and fortunately, he managed to avoid the Shark as he chomped down and ended up with the mast instead of Flounder in his mouth as he swam round the vertical pole.

However, upon noticing that Flounder was no longer with her, Ariel turned and, dropping her bag, she quickly swam down to where Flounder was descending and caught him as she swam through the ring on the top of an anchor.

However, the Shark came charging right at them, and Ariel quickly retreated through the ring, but unfortunately for the Shark, by the time he noticed the anchor ring, it was too late.

"CRUD!" he cursed, unable to stop himself as he swam right into it and got his head stuck.

Ariel then picked up her bag and let out a playful laugh before swimming off to the surface.

"You big bully!" Flounder said, feeling braver now that the Shark was stuck, and then, he blew the Shark a rather rude raspberry.

However, the Shark just responded with a chomp of his mouth.

"I swear, you little guppy, both you and your little mermaid friend will regret this!" he roared in a rather vengeful tone, "You both better hope that I never get outta here because if I do, I'll hunt you both down wherever you are and then I'll make you both sorry that you were ever born!"

Flounder, of course, was not listening. After the Shark had chomped at him, he screamed and then followed Ariel.

"Flounder, you really are a guppy," Ariel laughed.

"I am not," Flounder protested simply.

* * *

><p>However, from the ship's bow, Fritz emerged, having hidden from the entire scene, and upon realising that it was safe to come out, he came out and swam up after Ariel and Flounder, all the while maintaining his distance as he listened to the trapped shark spew out a list or tirades and cuss words, some of which, he did not know the meaning of.<p>

"Phew, that was a close one," he thought to himself, as he thought back to his situation with Marina.

He had to admit that Ariel and Marina were similar in some regards, but vastly different in others. For example, from what he could tell from Flounder, he was not that courageous, and he got scared rather easily, and more often than not, he often tried to talk Ariel out of her escapades, fearful that something bad may happen to them. The biggest difference between Ariel and Marina was that Ariel tended to tease her friend a lot whenever he brought up his fears, whereas, remembering the only time in which he disagreed with Marina was when she went to see Devillia, Marina just mostly ignored his protests, only regarding him when he threatened to tell King Kraken where she was.

Another difference was when it came to their fathers. From what he heard from Ariel's many conversations with Flounder, Ariel seemed to be a more, "In your face" type of person when it came to her father, and she was not afraid to voice her disagreements with him, whereas, whenever Marina had gotten into trouble with her father, she had just floated there and took it, though, unlike Triton, Kraken had his mother, Marina's grandmother, to keep him in check, whereas Triton had nobody to force him to stay his hand.

Marina's grandmother was very wise and knew how to handle any given situation when it came to disciplining her granddaughters. Fritz knew that Triton could definitely do with some of her advice. After all, Ariel's fascination of the surface world had come about, partially, because he had told her to stay away from the surface, and the more he tried to stop her, the more he was unknowingly encouraging her to disobey him, and all his attempts to be strict with her only made controlling her more difficult. Even Fritz could see that, but even if Marina's grandmother had given Triton advice and told him what he was doing wrong, from what Fritz had heard, Triton seemed like a rather prideful man who would not listen to anyone, and it would only take some disaster occurring in order to get him to admit that he was wrong.

Anyway, thinking back to the whole situation with Marina, Fritz had been absolutely and thoroughly devastated at what had happened to his friend. However, he supposed that he had no one to blame but himself, since he had been the one to show Marina that sunken ship that contained the Prince's statue… of course, at the time, he had no idea that it was there, and it had also been his idea to sneak out and go to the surface. It had originally been intended as a quick excursion, but the fireworks from a nearby ship had grabbed their attention and Marina saw the Prince for the first time, but then, Devillia had decided to conjure up a storm, which led to Marina rescuing the Prince and it led to them getting caught.

"Oh, Marina, I wish you'd understand, you're not a heartless monster, you're not," he thought with a sad sigh, as the heartache he felt since then surfaced.

Sure, he could easily see that it was Marina's fault that she was in the situation she was in, since she had agreed to Devillia's deal and thrown all caution to the wind, and probably just assumed that everyone would accept the situation, but Fritz could see that Marina was not as uncaring as she believed herself to have been.

After all, when the Sea-Bottom Police Patrol had found them, he had been taken to be interrogated, and he remembered Marina telling them to leave him alone and that the whole thing had been her fault, and also, after he saved her from Devillia's mutant polyps and that giant clam, he had decided that if Marina was not going to back down, then he would help her, but Marina refused saying that he had already gone through too much trouble because of her, and it took him throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum before she changed her mind, though, she had told him to keep quiet in case Devillia had been asleep and was fearful that his tantrum would wake her up, and also, when she emerged and he confessed that he did not want her to become a human, she did try to comfort him, and before leaving for the Summer Palace, she looked over the Merman Palace as she bid her family a silent farewell.

Fritz had been there, he had seen Marina's sad expression, and yet, she believed that she had cold-heartedly abandoned them. That was not true, though, when he told Marina's sisters about what had happened the next day, they had not taken the news very well, and had proven Marina's assumptions wrong when they expressed their anger, hurt and betrayal over the issue, unable to believe that their little sister had upped and abandoned them without so much as a word, and some had even said things that they did not mean out of anger, and Fritz found himself speaking in her defence, though, he had to admit that he was very lacking in evidence since Marina had made the decision entirely on her own and her sisters had brought up valid points.

Nonetheless, he still stood by Marina no matter what. He did not know why that was, even if he did agree with Marina in that she had no one to blame but herself, but there was just something about Marina that whenever he tried to be mad at her for whatever reason, he just could not bring himself to get mad, and on the few occasions that he did manage to push past this barrier, his anger did not usually last all that long, which was a stark contrast to when they met, and Fritz pretty much remembered how he ranted, raved and badmouthed Marina to tears in anger when she had accidentally bumped into him… well actually, he had also not been paying attention to where he was going either, and they bumped into each other, and Marina did apologise, but Fritz had ignored her and snapped.

Back then he did not like mer-people very much. The majority of mer-folk he had met in the past had all… in his opinion, been rather snobbish and stuck-up, having a low opinion of other sea life and swam around like they owned the ocean, and they seemed to believe that the other life that inhabited the sea basically existed for their benefit. He remembered back before he met Marina when a couple of mer-folk had rather rudely barged past him without remorse and had not apologised at all, and in fact, they seemed to take offence, despite the fact that they had been the ones who had started it, and yet, the way they regarded him, it was as if the entire incident had been his fault to begin with, and that incident had been fresh in his mind when Marina bumped into him, and believing that she was no different, he had lashed out at her, too caught up in his anger to listen to her apology.

However, fortunately King Kraken had a word with his Uncle Duke, a humpback whale, and he had guilt-tripped him into apologising to Marina, and after an awkward first few minutes, they eventually became comfortable round one another and their friendship hit off from there, and Marina had proven to him that not all mer-folk were like what he envisioned, though, King Kraken had come to view him as a bad influence on Marina, and Marina's sisters tolerated him, though, they teased Marina relentlessly about the fact she was friends with him.

"Good times," he thought to himself, as he remembered the day he had shown Marina the ship that contained the Prince's statue when he overheard her sisters teasing her when her grandmother had caught her trying to sneak out and go up to the surface with them.

He remembered how they teasingly warned her about land animals that would growl at her from the shoreline and naughty human boys that would throw stones at her, which by some coincidence did happen, though not to Marina. The first time he had gathered the courage to swim to the Summer Palace to check up on Marina, he had been confronted with three human boys on the beach, who proceeded to throw stones at him and Marina and the Prince, himself, both came to his aid with Marina checking to see if he was alright and the Prince reprimanding the boys for their behaviour.

Anyway, upon coming near the surface, he pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile up on a small outcrop of rock on the surface, sitting in his makeshift nest that was built on the crow's nest of a ship's mast that was tilted at an angle, Scuttle the Seagull was busy looking through a telescope as he hummed a tune that he heard sailors sing while at sea. However, unfortunately for him, he was way off key. He then leaned back pointing the telescope up at the sky and then placed the telescope on his head as he adjusted its length and then started to shake it with him wing.<p>

"Scuttle!" a voice that Scuttle was familiar with shouted out, even as he was doing his strange activity, but then, he hesitated for a few seconds and brought the telescope up to his right eye and looked down at the water.

"Wow, mermaid off the port bow!" he shouted, as he saw Ariel and Flounder with Ariel waving at him, and they both appeared to be rather far away, "Ariel, how ya doin', kid?"

However, Ariel and Flounder were both right up at the rock outcrop, and Scuttle was unknowingly looking through the wrong end of the telescope, and Ariel moved her hand up to the telescope and pushed it down, and to Scuttle, all of a sudden, Ariel had somehow covered the distance instantly.

"Wow, what a swim," he said ignorantly, as he put away the telescope.

"Scuttle, look what we found," Ariel said, as she reached beneath the surface and pulled up her bag before dumping it on the rock.

"Yeah, we were in this sunken ship and it was really creepy," Flounder started to say, as he tried to explain their recent ordeal with the shark.

"Human stuff, huh?" Scuttle interrupted, clearly not listening to the little yellow-striped fish, as he lifted an anchor attached to a rope out from his nest, "Let me see."

He then dropped the anchor down on the rock, unaware that the rope was looped round his leg, and so, when the anchor fell, it pulled him down with it, and the rope unwrapped itself from round his leg with a ping. After picking himself himself up, he rushed over to Ariel's bag, unknowingly jumping on top of Flounder's head in the process, causing the fish to glare at him for his ignorance, but Scuttle took no notice as he rummaged through Ariel's bag.

"Look at this," he said, as he took out the dinner fork, holding it between two of the black feathers at the end of his wing with the black feathers acting more like fingers, and he brought the fork up to his eyes as he examined it, "Wow, this is special."

He then rubbed the side of his head with his other wing.

"This is very, very unusual," he went on, as he brought the fork down and stared at Ariel.

"What, what is it?" Ariel said with a mixture of curiosity and excitement.

"It's a dinglehopper," Scuttle explained, though in truth, he really had no idea what it was or what it did due to his stupidity and just made things up as they came to his mind, "Humans use these little babies…"

As he was giving his explanation he bent the fork; the "dinglehopper", as he dubbed it, between his wings, causing it to spring into the air and he fumbled about as he tried to catch it, but managed to catch it by the handle and hold it so that the prongs were facing upwards.

"To straighten their hair out," he finished, acting as if nothing had happened.

He then brought the fork up to the top of his head and twirling it round, catching some of the feathers on his head and twirled them round the fork like a string of spaghetti.

"See, just a little twirl here and a yank there and voilay," he went on explaining, as he attempted to yank the fork upwards and out from his feathers, and managed to eventually pull on the fork, which was still twirled round his feathers out along with a few feathers and the rest of his feathers on the top of his head puffed out, making him look absolutely ridiculous, "You have an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over."

He then handed it back to Ariel, who took it in both hands and stared at it in admiration.

"A dinglehopper," she said, as she committed everything Scuttle told her to memory.

* * *

><p>Not far away, Fritz just scoffed in pure frustration and disbelief, unable to believe just how gullible Ariel was when it came to the idiotic seagull's explanations of human things. He knew who Scuttle was, since whenever Ariel found something that interested her, she would often come up here to where Scuttle lived in order to find out how it worked. Fritz had lost count of how many times he had followed Ariel up here. He was far enough away to observe unnoticed, but close enough to hear every word.<p>

"You're wrong, birdbrain, it's a dinner fork," he grumbled in annoyance, as he glared at Scuttle, "Humans use them during their evening meals to stab their food with, since eating with their hands is considered what humans call, unhygienic."

He knew what it really was because, ever since Marina came to live with Eric, he had listened in on Eric's explanations on how various human things worked while he and Marina were down at the shoreline, and he did overhear Eric's explanation about the dinner fork and Eric even showed him what one looked like when he realised that he was eavesdropping in order to show him what he was talking about, and so, Fritz knew exactly what the "dinglehopper" really was because he recognised its design.

However, he was annoyed at Scuttle. The seagull was clearly stupid and was as blind as a bat at times. It confused him to no end how Ariel did not catch onto his fake explanations. Even if she was clueless about human things, surely with Scuttle's stupidity being so blatantly obvious, she would've caught onto his game by now. Scuttle clearly had no idea what he was talking about and only made things up as he went along, and he assigned those various things such ridiculous names because, in Fritz's opinion, Scuttle believed they just sounded cool.

"How you can honestly believe this moron, Princess Ariel, is beyond me," he grumbled, also voicing in his frustration at Ariel's gullibility and how she failed to catch onto the fact that Scuttle's explanations were wrong despite his obvious stupidity.

* * *

><p>Back with Scuttle, Flounder and Ariel, Flounder noticed the smoking pipe that had fallen out of Ariel's bag as Scuttle rummaged through it earlier.<p>

"What about that one?" he asked curiously as he pointed at it with his right pectoral fin.

"Ah," Scuttle, whose "hair" was now back to normal, said as he picked it up and then closely examined it, twirling it round so that the upper opening on the pipe was facing him, "This… I haven't seen in years."

As he spoke, his tone escalated in excitement as he walked towards the rock that the ship mast leaned on.

"This is wonderful," he went on, as he turned back to face his two friends and jumped towards them and then held the pipe up as he presented it back to Ariel, "A banded bulbous snarfblatt."

"Ooh," both Flounder and Ariel said excitedly in unison, as they turned to look at one another briefly before turning their attention back to Scuttle.

"Now, the snarfblatt dates back to prehistoric times, when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day," Scuttle explained as dipped the pipe in the water, filling it up and then emptied it before sitting up, and then, he brought his face right up into Ariel's and locked eyes with her, "That's very boring."

He then quickly turned his attention back to the pipe as he jumped to his feet.

"So, they invented this snarfblatt to make fine music," he went on, as he held the pipe by one wing and then took it in both wings and then nodded, "Allow me."

* * *

><p>From his vantage point, Fritz only groaned in frustration at listening to Scuttle's explanation, though, he had to admit, remembering back to when he and Marina first explored the ship that contained the Prince's statue, they had found a pipe, though, it was of a different design and Marina had tried blowing through it like it was a musical instrument, and he guessed that it was a flute of some kind, and Marina agreed with him, but reckoned that it was broken since no music come out and at the time, he had agreed with her.<p>

However, now he knew what it really had been. It was a smoking pipe some humans used for reasons that still escaped the young dolphin calf's grasp. He honestly had no idea what humans used them for and in his opinion, unless he heard otherwise, he reasoned that there was no reason for them other than it looked cool.

* * *

><p>Back with Ariel, Flounder and Scuttle, Scuttle was about to attempt to "play" the "snarfblatt" when Ariel suddenly realised something she had forgotten. However, Scuttle went ahead and blew into the pipe, but instead of music, all that came out of the pipe was a mixture of muck, gunge and seaweed, causing Scuttle to cough in disgust at the revolting taste.<p>

"Music," Ariel said with a slightly frightened gasp of alarm, as she suddenly realised that she had forgotten about the concert.

"It's stuck," Scuttle coughed, feeling nauseated and unaware of Ariel's sudden realisation.

"Oh, the concert," Ariel went on as she hurriedly grabbed the fork and put it back in her bag, "Oh my gosh, my father's gonna kill me."

"The concert was today?" Flounder said, equally as alarmed as Ariel was as a look of panic washed over his face.

"Maybe you can make a little planter out of it or somethin'," Scuttle said, still holding the pipe as he was inspecting it to see what was wrong with it.

"I'm sorry," Ariel apologised, as she quickly snatched the pipe from Scuttle's wing and put it back in her bag, "I've gotta go."

She then started to swim away before stopping, and then, she turned back to wave at Scuttle, "Thank you, Scuttle."

"Anytime, sweetie," Scuttle replied, as Ariel dove below the surface, "Anytime."

* * *

><p>Fritz's eyes also widened upon hearing that there was a concert, and all of a sudden, he remembered that it was the one-year anniversary of when the music ban in Atlantica had been lifted. He did not know the full story, but he knew that King Triton's wife, Athena had met with an untimely death eleven years ago, and as a result, Triton had banned music in the Kingdom, and this ban remained in place for ten whole years before it had been lifted, though, he did not know how. He guessed that the ban had something to do with Queen Athena's death, but he did not know the details of how or why it was lifted.<p>

Anyway he dove down after Ariel who was now hurryingly swimming off in the direction of Atlantica City. However as he was about to turn and follow her, he noticed two faint yellow glows coming from underneath an undersea ledge.

"What could that be?" he thought curiously, as he slowly and cautiously swam closer, prepared to turn and flee at a moment's notice as he suddenly felt a bad feeling coming up from the depths of his stomach.

As he got closer to the undersea ledge, he noticed two sinisterly dark green moray eels; both looking completely identical to one another, and the young dolphin calf immediately figured that they were twins. The only difference was that the eel on the right's right eye was glowing and the eel on the left's left eye was glow and they brought their heads together with their glowing eyes almost touching and the pupils of their glowing eyes suddenly took on the silhouette forms of both Ariel and Flounder, causing Fritz to shudder in fear, as he knew that those two were definitely up to no good, since it was pretty obvious from their posture that they were doing everything they could to stay concealed.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, in a rather barren area of the seabed, in a cavern, both Ariel and Flounder appeared in a floating globule of grey goo that was suspended above a small round table made up of a rocky outcrop and the circumference was lining with jagged rocks facing upwards at diagonal angles.<p>

"Yes, hurry home, Princess," a sinisterly deep, yet female voice came from inside a giant greyish black conch shell that was mounted near the top of the cavern, "We wouldn't want to miss old daddy's celebration, now would we?"

Despite being alone, the shadowy figure within the conch spoke her thoughts aloud, and her tone was laced with bitter sarcasm as she spoke. Inside the conch along with her was an open shell table attached to a pole that was, in turn, attached to the floor.

"Humph, celebration indeed, ho-ho, bah," the figure said with increasing anger laced in her tone, as she briefly waved her hand dismissively with a single quick, and somewhat forceful jerk, "In my day, we had fantastical feasts, when I lived in the palace."

As she spoke, she reached out a hand to the shell table, which had a group of four shrimps sleeping on it, but upon noticing the hand reaching out for them, three of them jumped back towards the back of the table, but the fourth, obviously had not realised the danger as it continued to sleep, only realising the danger when the figure grasped it in her fingers and brought it up to her mouth.

Realising what was going to happen, the poor shrimp let a series of frantically terrified shrieks that came out sounding more like terrified high-pitched chirps as the other three could only look on helplessly. The figure then threw the shrimp into her mouth and after a few chomps of her teeth, swallowed it in one big gulp.

"And now look at me," the figure went on, as she leaned against the side of the conch's opening, coming into the light with a "woe-is-me" sad expression on her face, "Wasted away to practically nothing."

She then moved her body down the edge of the opening till to she was on her back.

"Banished and exiled and practically starving," the figure went on with increasingly seething fury in her tone, as she rolled on her front and clenched her fists as she glared into the goo globule that functioned much like a crystal ball, "While he and his flimsy fish-folk celebrate."

As she spoke, she got up and slithered out of the giant conch, revealing herself to be a cecaelia, a cousin of mer-folk, only instead of being part fish, they were part octopus and this woman had six tentacles, as opposed to eight.

"And it's all your fault!" she spat venomously, as she turned and shot a rather passionately hateful glare, filled with pure rage up at a picture of a mermaid that looked almost identical to Ariel, and, without warning, she threw a starfish dart up at it, and the starfish nailed the picture right where the mermaid's heart would be, "Not bad aim, if I do say so, myself."

The cecaelia woman let out a brief smile before her expression turned to one of pure rage as she continued to stare up at the mermaid in the picture, and then, she turned to look at Ariel in the goo globule. Yes, they did look identical and they even had the same colour of seashell bra. However, the mermaid in the picture's tail was a pure aqua blue colour, her eyes were green and her hair was lighter than Ariel's and looked more orange with perhaps a small hint of brown than red, and the mermaid also wore a light purple shell necklace and also had a five-pronged golden crown sitting on her head, only it was a lot smaller than Triton's. However, the mermaid had a kind and caring smile on her face, but someone had drawn over the mermaid's face and drew a rather cruel, boastful and arrogantly smug looking smile over her real smile and it looked as if the mermaid was staring at the cecaelia woman, as if taunting and mocking her for her misfortunate.

"Well, I'll give 'em something to celebrate soon enough," the Cecaelia Woman said, as she resumed her original train of thought, putting the mermaid to back of her mind for the moment and moved across the room before turning to the goo globule and yelled at it, "Flotsam, Jetsam!"

* * *

><p>Back with the two eels, both jumped in shock at hearing their mistress's voice in their head; not that they were not expecting it, since their mistress often spoke to them through the goo globules that made up her crystal balls, which they provided the images for via their glowing eyes; they were just taken off guard by the mistress's harsh and forceful tone and the eel with the glowing right eye, Jetsam, jumped too high and hit his head off the top of the ledge they were hiding under and used his tail to massage the pain away.<p>

* * *

><p>"I want you to keep an extra close watch on this pretty little daughter of his," the Cecaelia Woman went on.<p>

* * *

><p>Back with Flotsam and Jetsam, both displayed rather sinister grins as they heard their mistress's instructions, unaware of the observing dolphin, and though Fritz did not hear their mistress's voice, he had decided that he had seen enough and swam away before either of them noticed him.<p>

* * *

><p>"She may be the key to Triton's undoing," the Cecaelia Woman went on, as she sprouted a rather evilly sinister grin on her face as she brought her tentacles up round her and then turned to regard the picture of the mermaid once again, "Hear that, Athena?"<p>

Her tone then took on mocking sympathy as she spoke.

"Don't you see the irony?" the Cecaelia went on, as she continued to mock the mermaid, Athena, "Your youngest daughter, whom is your spitting image, will be the key to taking my revenge for what you did to me. Of course, I could kill her when I have no further use for her, but where's the fun in that?"

She then paused briefly as she clasped her hands in front of her in excited anticipation.

No, I have something better planned for her; something that will make you weep in your grave, you conniving backstabbing whore," she went on, as her tone flooded with more and more hate and rage as she spoke and her expression turning to one of spiteful fury, "No one strings Ursula along and stabs her in the back and gets away with it. If I can't make you pay, I'll take it out on those you love; just like your best friend, Hera!"

However, she then took a few deep breathes and calmed herself down, and then, she spoke into the goo globule again.

"Oh, and before I forget, see if you can help out Glut, will you, boys?" she said looking genuinely worried, as she knew of Ariel and Flounder's encounter with the shark earlier, "It seems that his encounter with Triton's girl has left him rather stuck."

* * *

><p>Flotsam and Jetsam both shuddered in terror at their mistress, Ursula's request. Glut was another one of Ursula's minions; a great white shark that had a rather short fuse when it came to his temper, and was easily angered at even the smallest of things. In fact, Ursula was the only one who could calm him down and keep him calm. He was fiercely loyal to her, for which both the moray eel brothers were thankful, since if it had not been for that, they knew that he would have "acquainted them with the inside of his stomach" as he put it, a long time ago.<p>

It was really no surprise that neither eel was too thrilled at the idea of getting Glut out of his predicament, since he clearly hated them and only put up with them due to his loyalty to their mistress, and if both had their way, they would have left Glut to starve to death or drown, but, unfortunately, Ursula wanted him freed and they knew better than to protest against her. Ursula was not the sort of person that tolerated insolence. If she wanted Glut free, then they had to do as she said, but that did not mean that they had to like it. Both were terrified of the shark and feared that he would one day eat them and be done with it regardless where his loyalties lay.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong> – That took longer than I thought. Another chapter out. One of the main reasons for taking so long is because I was experiencing a minor case of writer's block due to my inability to think up of names for Marina's sisters and I was also debating on whether or not to end the chapter after the confrontation with Glut the Shark or carry on to Ursula's introduction scene and well, the latter won out. I've made some changes, as you can see. Glut the Shark gets a bigger role as another of Ursula's minions and also, Ursula has a backstory that explains exactly how she became evil. My biggest inspiration for giving Glut a bigger role came from Morganna, Ursula's sister from Return to the Sea, who had Cloak and Dagger, which were her versions of Flotsam and Jetsam and so Glut is Ursula's version of Undertow the Tiger Shark (yes and once again, Ursula one-ups her sister by having a stronger shark).


	3. Wanting to be Part of that World

**Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids**

**Wanting to be "Part of that World"**

**Disclaimer** – I do not own any of the characters from the Little Mermaid. The Walt Disney adaptation is the property of the Walt Disney Company, the anime adaptation is the property of Toei Animation and both adaptations are based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson.

* * *

><p>Flotsam and Jetsam, the two green moray eel brothers in the service of Ursula, the Sea Witch, both nervously swam down to the Ship Graveyard where their colleague, Glut, the Great White Shark had gotten his head caught in the metal ring of an anchor after an encounter with King Triton's youngest daughter, Princess Ariel, whom they had both been observing under the orders of their mistress, since she was Triton's favourite of his seven daughters, probably due to the uncanny resemblance to her late mother, Queen Athena. Anyway, both Flotsam and Jetsam had been told to observe her, since her curious and adventurous nature often caused her to clash with her father and Ursula was looking for an opportunity to capitalise off their strained relationship in order to get at Triton for exiling her from Atlantica, as well as get back at Athena, despite the fact she was dead.<p>

However, despite their orders to continue their observations of Princess Ariel, as it turned out, she and her fish friend had encountered Glut during one of their many excursions to the Ship Graveyard and had managed to trap Glut in the ring of an anchor, though, it had been completely by accident, since Princess Ariel had returned to retrieve her friend and she just so happened to be positioned at the anchor and by the time Glut, who had charged at the yellow fish, realised it, it was too late and he ended up having his head caught in the ring attached to the top of the anchor.

Both could hear Glut's many cusses and swear words as they got closer, and needless to say, this was one detour that they were not looking forward to. Neither Flotsam nor Jetsam particularly liked Glut all that much, and as far as Glut was concerned, the feeling was mutual. Glut had a fiery temper and a short fuse to match. It did not take all that much to anger the great white shark, and both Flotsam and Jetsam remembered how he had threatened them multiple times in the past, claiming that if it was not for their mistress taking a liking to them, they would have "become acquainted with the inside of his stomach" long ago. He did seem to have a deep-seeded loathing for the pair of them. They did not know what it was, but ever since they had met Glut, Glut seemed determined that he was going to eat them someday, and it was only due to his loyalty to Ursula that kept him at bay.

Anyway, putting their personal feelings to one side, they both eventually came to where Glut was stuck and needless to say, Glut was not in a good mood to say the least. Currently, he was violently thrashing around as he tried to dislodge the ring round his head, all the while, cussing and swearing like an angry drunkard. However, fortunately for the Brothers, upon seeing them, Glut ceased his thrashing around, though, he shot them both a rather hateful glare, clearly not too happy to see them; in fact, seeing them seemed to darken his already-infuriated mood even more.

"Let me guess," he spoke is a very calm, yet infuriated tone, "Mistress Ursula sent you, didn't she?"

"Yesssss, ssssshe did," Flotsam, the eel on the left said with a deep, raspy, slightly gurgling snake-like voice.

"If it were up to usssss, though, we'd leave you here to ssssstrave or drown, whichever comesssss firssssst," Jetsam said, his voice sounding identical to his brother's, as he made no secret of their mutual hatred of each other.

"Glad to hear that you're honest," Glut remarked with a grumble before he thrashed towards them angrily, "Now hurry up and get me outta here!"

"Now hold on, there, Glut," Flotsam spoke up, as he shot the Shark a glare of his own, "Jussssst ssssso you know…"

"That little mermaid you jussssst encountered jussssst ssssso happensssss to be Princessssssssss Ariel," Jetsam went on as he picked up from where his brother left off.

"King Triton'sssss youngessssst daughter," Flotsam went on, as he swam to Glut's left side near the back and coiled his body round where his caudal fin was connected to his body.

"And Madam Ursssssula hasssss big plansssss for her," Jetsam finished, as he swam underneath the Huge Shark and pressed his head against that anchor.

"WHAT!" Glut exclaimed in shock, as he suddenly felt rage overtake his mind, "You mean to tell me that I won't be able to settle the score with that little sea witch?"

"If you have any objectionsssss," Flotsam said, as he started to pull on Glut's tail.

"Then feel free to take them up with Madam Ursssssula," Jetsam finished, as he started to push his head against the anchor.

"Great!" Glut grumbled, seething with fury, clearly not too pleased that his mistress had taken a shine to the mermaid that he held responsible for his current predicament.

He had initially been planning on hunting the mermaid and her friend down and devour them, but since the two eels had revealed that Ursula already had decided she had plans for the mermaid, killing her had become an impossibility at the moment, since he knew that whenever Ursula had her eye on someone, it usually meant that she wanted them alive for the time being, and she did not take too kindly whenever something bad befell her intended targets before she could enact her plans for them.

Oh well, the shark figured, it was probably just the mermaid that his mistress wanted, right? Surely there was no harm in killing her little friend? Letting out a rather frustrated sigh, he decided that he would just have to make do with what he had and he planned on seeing Ursula in order to know what she had planned for the little mermaid, and also to check whether or not he had permission to deal with her little fish friend, because one way or another, he was determined that someone was going to pay for him ending him caught in this infernal anchor's ring no matter what.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Fritz, the young dolphin calf from Mediterranea was currently on the surface by the seashore that Prince Eric's castle overshadowed. Totally unaware of what the two moray eels were doing, he listened along with Marina as Prince Eric was currently explaining to them how that while on board a ship, the captain's word was the law. He came to the surface to see how Marina was doing every now and then when Marina was on the shoreline and there were a few times in which she was in Eric's company, like now, and occasionally Eric's dog, Max would join them, but not this time.<p>

However, rather than bring up the past and having Marina wallow over in how foolish she was, and Fritz and Eric both trying to fruitlessly convince her otherwise, they tended to talk about other things to keep themselves from bringing up that terrible topic. Yes, Marina was foolish and she acknowledged that. However, they all had a mutual agreement that what was done was done and nothing would come of bringing it up over and over.

"So, what you're saying is that despite you being a prince, while at sea, you're subordinate to the ship's captain, is that right?" Fritz asked Eric curiously.

"That's right," Eric said with a nod as Marina, who was standing to his left, looked on in silent curiosity, "Nautical law clear states that the captain of a vessel is in command of that vessel and everyone on board. Sure, I may be the prince of the Kingdom, but on board a ship, the captain is in command. He is well within his rights to deny me permission to board his vessel. Of course, no captain would ever do that due to the fact that I am the Kingdom's prince, but it is possible."

"Oh, I see," Fritz said, as both he and Marina nodded in unison.

"You know, when I first sailed on a ship, because of my position as the Kingdom's prince, the Captain was rather reluctant to let me help out around the ship," Eric said with a chucked as he folded his arms across his chest and looked out at the sea, as memories of his first voyage came to his mind.

"Really?" Marina mouthed silently, momentarily forgetting that she could no longer speak, which tended to happen from time to time.

"Really?" Fritz said, repeating Marina's lip movement, having saw them.

Sure, despite the fact that Marina had learned how to write, here on the shoreline, there was nothing to lean on in order to write what she wanted to say, and so, with that in mind, Fritz normally used his lip-reading skills to convey whatever Marina wanted to say.

"Yep," Eric said with a nod and a smile, "Because I was the Prince, the crew were, at first, reluctant to let me help out, since it was not considered something that a prince would get involved in. When people think of royalty, their perceived image usually comes across as rich, snuck-up snobs that consider everyone else beneath them, and that hard work is not something that they should get involved with. One of my main motivations in life is to prove that notion wrong. My parents, before they died, were fairly decent, well-respected and level-headed people, and they taught me all about the commoners and how they lived their lives."

Both Marina and Fritz nodded as they listened to him intently, admiting that he did, indeed have a point. Fjord was a lot closer to the commoners' percieved image of royalty than Eric was, Marina remembered.

"Anyway, I always seemed to have a love of the sea," Eric went on, as he beamed with pride, and Marina was brought out of her thoughts, "My father took me on a voyage to a neighbouring kingdom across the sea and it was then that I discovered my passion for the sea, and I learned everything there was to know about sailing so that someday, I may get the chance to help, since if I'm travelling on board a ship, I feel that I should be doing something to contribute to the ship's upkeep, though, I won't deny that being on board a ship with nothing to do is very dull and boring. I'd much rather pull my own weight than walk around with nothing to do or confind myself to my cabin."

"I think that you're a great man," Marina mouthed, and Fritz then spoke her words aloud, "You definitely did more around the ships you've been on than Prince Fjord did."

"Thanks," Eric said, feeling somewhat honoured from the mute girl's praise.

He did, of course, know that Prince Fjord was the name of the other prince, the prince that, as far as he knew, had cast Marina aside in favour of his "dream girl", and after he had built up her hopes by claiming that he would rather marry her if he could not find the girl he wanted. Unfortunately, he did find the girl he wanted, and had complete forgotten about what he had told Marina Anyway, shaking his head, he decided not to dwell on it. If he ever met Fjord in person, he would probably smack him one for what he did to Marina, but other than that, he wanted nothing to do with him and would only address the issue if Fjord ever came to his Kingdom in person.

"Anyway, as I was saying, on my first voyage on my own, without my parents, I wanted to help out round the ship," Eric said, continuing with his story, as he pushed his growing animosity towards Fjord to the back of his mind, "However, as I said, at first, the crew were reluctant to let me help out. However, after the ship sailed into a storm, a wave came up on deck and hurled the Captain overboard, and also, by word of law, when a ship is going down, the captain is always the last one off the ship, since as the ship's commander, he has to ensure that everyone else has evacuated beforehand. However, in this instance, the Captain's being off the ship was due to circumstances beyond his control, and before I even knew what I was doing, I had already jumped in after the Captain and saved his life."

"Wow," Fritz said in pure wonder and Marina could not help but mouth the same word.

"Uh huh," Eric said with a proud nod as he unfolded his arms and put his hands on his hips, "And after that, I managed to gain the trust of the entire crew. You see, as ruler of my Kingdom, I see my role in the same light as a ship's captain. Just as the Captain is responsible for the lives of everyone aboard his vessel, as Prince of my kingdom, I am responsible for the lives of everyone in my kingdom and those men were subjects of my kingdom."

"Yeah, I suppose one could look at it that way," Fritz said, as he went over what Eric had just said, and had to admit that Eric did have a point.

"So anyway, Fritz, I was just wondering, what do you get up to while out at sea?" Eric asked, looking at the young calf curiously, which caught Fritz completely by surprise.

Marina also stared at her friend curiously, wondering just what Fritz got up to while she was in the Palace, since she knew that he did not laze around waiting for her to come and see him.

Fritz, himself, upon recovering from his surprise, started to debate on whether or not he should tell them about Princess Ariel and her many adventures. So far, he had not told Marina about what he got up to, partially because she had not asked, and also, partially because he was afraid that Marina would believe that he was considering abandoning her, which he absolutely had no intention of doing. Despite everything that had happened, he still loved Marina and thought the world of her, and he would not abandon her for anyone, which was why he had never approached Princess Ariel, because he believed that in doing so, he was abandoning Marina; plus he was also afraid of what King Triton would do if he discovered Marina's mermaid origins, since it was quite apparent that he had a deep-seeded hatred for humans. The young calf had no idea how the Sea King would handle the knowledge of a mermaid that... prbably as far as he was concerned, had turned her back on her heritage, betrayed her people and became human.

Anyway, thinking about Princess Ariel also caused him to recall events earlier that day, in which, Princess Ariel and her friend, Flounder, had encountered a great white shark while exploring a sunken shipwreck and their encounter with Scuttle the Seagull, and then, he remembered noticing how they had been watched by two sinister looking green moray eels that had been doing their best to stay concealed. That definitely caused a few shudders in his spine, as it did not look as if they were up to anything good and their glowing eyes indicated the use of magic.

"I can't believe the four of you," a familiar voice, sounding rather furious came, bringing Fritz out of his thoughts.

"Oh come on, Regatta, we were only having a bit of fun," another familiar voice came, replying to the first.

Fritz turned and looked behind him and saw Marina's five older sisters coming towards them, though, from the looks of it, it seemed that Regatta was trying her best to outpace her sisters, and she did not look too happy to say the least.

"Umm, what's with her?" the dolphin calf asked, looking rather confused as to what was going on.

Marina also looked on in confusion, wondering just what her sisters had done that had gotten Regatta upset.

"Well, while Marina was at sea, we decided that we would pass the time be attending a concert down in Atlantica," Submara, the middle, and third youngest sister, started to explain.

"Yeah, it's the One Year Anniversary of the lifting of the music ban that was imposed eleven years ago by King Triton," Corolla, the second youngest sister, said, picking up from where her orange-haired sister left off.

Fritz just nodded, remembering that Princess Ariel did mention something about a concert when Scuttle mentioned the word, music during his explanation of the "snarfblatt". After that, Princess Ariel had gasped in shock, realising that she had forgotten about the concert, and then, she hurriedly collected her things and headed back to Atlantica. That was before he had noticed the two sinister eels.

"Anyway, long story short, the concert ended in disaster when King Triton's youngest daughter, Princess Ariel, failed to turn up," Aquaria, the second oldest sister concluded, bringing Fritz out of his thoughts.

"Oh, so she didn't make it back after all," Fritz thought to himself, as he remembered the sense of alarm in Princess Ariel's tone when she realised that she was supposed to be at the concert.

"And you four had to go and laugh about it," Regatta said, shooting all four of her sisters a rather disappointed and infuriated glare.

Fritz, Eric and Marina's eyes all widened in shock and surprise at hearing this as they looked at the five sisters in confusion.

"Oh, come on, Regatta," Tida, the third oldest sister said with a bit of a laugh, as she remembered the aftermath, "As I said before, we were only having a bit of fun, and besides, it's not our fault that Basto's such a short stack."

"You remember Basto, don't you Marina?" Corolla said, looking at Marina with questioning eyes, "Remember, that small red crab we all used to mess around with and make fun of?"

"Sebastian, his name is Sebastian; Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian to be exact," Regatta corrected, as she shot her green-haired sister a glare.

Marina just blinked, unsure how to process all this. Yes, she did remember that she had visited Atlantica a few times in the past before Queen Athena and her mother both died, and she also did vaguely remember a small red crab that she and her sisters used to have fun with.. or rather, make fun of.

"Oh Sebastian, yes, I remember him," she thought with a bit of a giggle, as she recalled some of the things she and her sisters did to him, even if those things were rather vague.

However, that was so long ago that she could barely remember Sebastian and she could not help but wonder just how he was getting on.

"Yeah, whatever," Submara said with an uncaring wave of her hand in response to her older sister's comment, and she then turned to regard Marina, "Anyway, he was the concert's conductor, and he's still such a short stack."

"I'm not so sure what you're all talking about," Eric said, looking confused, as he spoke up for the first time since Regatta and the others made their presence known.

Regatta regarded him for a moment and then nodded.

"Okay, you remember that we told you that during our childhood, up until eleven years ago, we used to come here, don't you?" she said, and Eric just nodded.

"Well, while we were here, whenever mom was busy, King Triton's most trusted advisor, Sebastian, would often babysit us," Regatta went on and she shot a glare behind her at her sisters when she heard one of them snigger.

"Uh huh," Eric said with a nod, as he absorbed this information.

Fritz just listened, knowing who they were talking about. He knew about Sebastian, and had even seen him a couple of times while observing Princess Ariel in the past. However, he would often yell at her for one thing or another, only to be ignored and ever so occasionally, he often found himself unwillingly participating in whatever adventure Princess Ariel went on. As it turned out, he was also the Royal Court Composer and he also had a strange accent.

"Well, in the past, we used always have a spot of fun with him," Regatta went on, as Fritz continued to reminisce.

"Including you," Corolla said, as she pointed out a known fact, "What happened to you? Why all serious all of a sudden?"

"I grew up, which is more than I can say for you four," Regatta replied, and then, she turned to look as Marina, wondering just whose side she was going to take.

Marina just shrugged and shook her head, letting her sisters all know that she wanted no part in their argument, though she did realise that Regatta was upset over the fact that her other sisters had must have made fun of Sebastian again and hurt his feelings.

Regatta just gave her younger sister an understanding nod, and then, she returned to glaring at her other sisters.

"And not only that, but you all set a bad example for our kngdom," Regatta continued to rant, clearly becoming frustrated at her sisters' lack of caring, "We're fortunate that King Triton, himself, didn't pull us up for your misbehaviour. I wouldn't have liked to have had to explain to him just why we were here to begin with."

At that, all five sisters shuddered, since they knew that with Triton having barred interaction with the surface world, they were all technically breaking Atlantican Law, and they knew that while they were in Atlantican Waters, they were all subject to Atlantican Law, and if they were caught up here talking to humans, then not even their status as foreign princesses of a neighbouring undersea kingdom would save them, and not even telling the Atlanticans that the human they were seeing was their little sister would do any good, and in fact, could prove more damaging since Marina had originally been a mermaid.

They did not know how Triton would react to that. They knew that he hated humans with a burning passion, blaming them for the death of Queen Athena. Just how would he react knowing that a mermaid had become a human? None of them wanted to risk the possibility that Triton would seek Marina out to execute her for, what he would undoubtedly perceive as a betrayal against her fellow mer-folk.

Anyway, Regatta thought back to the concert, and after she had gone to try and apologise to Sebastian and calm him down, as expected, he automatically assumed that she was in on it along with her sisters and refused to listen to her. Fortunately, Princess Attina had seen the entire thing and thanks to her, she was able to help calm the little crab down. Needless to say, he still did not trust her and she felt his glare on her back as she quickly left with her sisters before King Triton noticed their presence and decided to pull them up, since they were princess of a foreign kingdom and, as far as Triton was probably concerned, they had no business being in Atlantica, especially considering the frosty relationship between their respective kingdoms.

"Hmm, I wonder how Princess Ariel is getting on," Fritz thought to himself, curious as to what was going to happen to her, now that he knew that she missed the concert.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, in the Atlantican Royal Palace, Flounder sighed from outside the Throne Room as Triton was busy admonishing his daughter. With the way the light shone down from the surface, at the moment, the merman-made structures all appeared to be an emerald green colour and that combined with the natural plant-life that grew on the seabed made the Royal Palace look spectacular.<p>

"I just don't know what we're going to do with you, young lady," Triton said, sighing in frustration from atop his throne, as Flounder swam over to Ariel.

Beside him to his left was Crown Princess Attina, who was not only one of Ariel's older sisters, but was the oldest of Triton's seven daughters, and that made her next in line to the Throne of Atlantica. Attina, herself, had a reddish orange tail with a matching seashell bra, green eyes, much like her mother's, short light brown hair with a curled up fringe at the front and curled up at the back and she also wore a headband tiara over the top of her head with five pronged spikes sticking out, though, her hair hid the headband, the five prongs were still visible and in a way, it symbolised her status as Crown Princess.

"Daddy, I'm sorry, I just forgot," Ariel said in response to her father's statement, as she tried to explain herself with a shrug of her shoulders and her hands up at her sides, "I…"

"As a result of your careless behaviour…" Triton went on with his trident in his right hand, cutting off his daughter's explanation.

"Careless and reckless behaviour..." Sebastian went on from atop the King's head, glaring down at Ariel with his pincers round two prongs of Triton's crown on the left hand side, picking up from where his liege left off.

"The entire celebration was er…" Triton went on before trailing off, as he considered what to say next, not wanting to sound too harsh, since Ariel was indeed his favourite out of his seven daughters and did not want her to grow to hate him.

"Well, it was ruined," Sebastian said, having no such reservations whatsoever, as he had also moved from atop Triton's head to behind his beard and emerged from it as he spoke, pushing the white hair aside on either side with his pincers, and he continued to glare at Ariel as he then swam right up to her with his left pincer up in the air… or in this case, water, "Dat's all, completely destroyed."

"Well, I'm sorry I had to rain on your parade," Ariel thought, as she stared at Sebastian with an amused look on her face, finding his outburst rather entertaining; all the while, ignoring the glares that both he, and her elder sister were giving her.

"Dis concert was to be… the pinnacle of my distinguished career," Sebastian ranted on with one of his pincers over his heart and the other lifted up at his side, and then he brought the pincer that was up to the top of his head, turning it to the side and briefly shut his eyes, before opening then and turned back to face Ariel, "De name of Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian was supposed to go down in history. Can you imagine it, my name in lights? I was supposed to be an inspiration to all of my successors as de Royal Court Composer. People were supposed to look back on dis concert and comment on how I was de best dere is, de best dere was and de best dere ever will be."

As he continued to ramble on, Triton and Attina both looked on with wide eyes, clearly surprised that Sebastian thought so highly of himself and as he spoke, his expression burst out into a rather proud and somewhat boastfully arrogant smile as he brought his pincers, holding them high above his head, before dropping them, and then, he returned to glaring at the no-show princess.

"Now, t'anks to you Princess Regatta and four of her sisters from de neighbouring Mediterranean Kingdom, who were in attendance, have turned me into de laughing stock of de entire Kingdom," the Red Crab continued to rant as he pointed at Ariel and then mimicked the gesture of a human putting their hands on their hips, "T'anks to you, I can never ever show my face in public ever again. Wherever I go, people will point and say, "Look, dere goes Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian, de loser". Me and my descendants will have to live with dis shame for de rest of dere lives."

"Hey, calm down, Sebastian," Attina said, interrupting the little red crab, as he was ridiculously trying to feign misery and embarrassment and even pointed in a random direction when he claimed that people would point at him, "Besides, I saw the whole thing. Princess Regatta wasn't mocking you like her sisters were. In fact, she seemed rather embarrassed and ashamed of their behaviour."

That much was true, she could recall. She remembered how Princess Regatta had swum over in an attempt to calm him down after her sisters had insensitively mocked and humiliated him and she had to swim over and help, though, she did have to wonder what brought the foreign princesses to Atlantica, considering that relations between Atlantica and Mediterranea had become remember bitter for the past eleven years. Attina did vaguely remember the Mediterranean Princesses back during her childhood before her mother died, and she remembered how they had often mocked and humiliated Sebastian in the past. However, she also remembered that there were originally six of them, and yet, only five had been in attendance. She could not help but wonder just where the youngest of them was.

Anyway, it was clear to everyone present that Sebastian was simply hyping up his own misfortune.

"But anyway, Ariel, the point is that by failing to show up, you not only made Sebastian look bad, you made all of us look bad," she concluded, bringing herself out of her thoughts, as she turned to regard Ariel and shot her little sister a look of disappointment.

"Sorry, Miss Sycophant," Ariel grumbled to herself, as she shot her sister a glare, making it clear that she was not happy at being lectured by her.

She really was sorry that she had missed the concert. The One Year Anniversary of the lifting of the music ban in Atlantica was something she had been looking forward to for months. After all, it was her busting Sebastian and the Catfish Club Band out of Jail, fleeing into the wilderness and retrieving the music box that her father had made for her mother that had been responsible for lifting it. So, she had been instrumental in the lifting of the music ban, and the concert was to commemorate her as much as it was to commemorate the lifting of the music ban.

It was just that she had gotten so caught up in her latest adventure down in the Ship Graveyard that... with everything that had happened, she had lost track of time and completely forgot about the concert entirely, and that was something she was not all that happy about.

"Yes, you made everyone look bad," Sebastian put in, as he swam over to Ariel and repeatedly thrust his right pincer at Ariel, still not happy about his humiliation.

He remembered that after the audience had stopped laughing, Princess Regatta had come over and tried to apologise, but he shouted and yelled at her, not believing that she was being sincere in the slightest, since in the past, he remembered that she had joined in with her five other sisters whenever they decided to have fun with him. It had taken Attina swimming over and putting her voice in to calm him down, and he grudgingly accepted the foreign princess's apology, though, he still did not believe that she was sincere and only accepted the apology just to drop the issue.

He really hated those six princesses for what they had done to him in the past, and if that was not bad enough, the youngest of them, who, Sebastian had to say, was glad that she was not in attendance, had the same name as his former rival and arch-nemesis, Marina Del Rey, who was still rotting away in the Palace Dungeon after she had attempted to kill both him and Ariel the previous year. He did not know why Princess Marina was not with them, and in truth, as curious as he was, he had decided that he did not care and was thankful for her absence. He just did not think he would be able to deal with another person with the name, Marina; not after what the last person with that name had put him through.

"But it wasn't her fault," Flounder, who had heard enough of Sebastian's angry ranting, said, as he swam up to Sebastian, bring the little crab out of his thoughts, and shot him a rather infuriating glare.

He could understand Triton admonishing Ariel, since she was his daughter, but, from what he could tell, the only reason Sebastian was admonishing her was because the ruination of the celebration had damaged his ego, and since he could not take it out on this Regatta person or any of her sisters, since Ariel was the reason the whole thing was ruined, he had decided to take his anger out on her instead.

Unfortunately, glaring at Sebastian caused him to swim upwards towards the King and Flounder suddenly found himself glaring right into King Triton's face, who more than happily returned his glare with one of his own, as well as a demanding look in his eyes.

"Then why don't you explain to us what you were both doing, then, huh, Flounder" Attina said with a demanding look of her own, as she voiced her father's unspoken statement.

"Uh… well, first… uh, this shark chased us…" Flounder started to explain, as he moved around frantically, apparently, in an attempt to act out the story, and also gave a series of nods, "Yeah, y-yeah… and we tried to… but we couldn't… and… grrrrrr… and, and we… wooow…"

Triton, Sebastian and Attina all looked at one another with bored expressions on their faces as Flounder's speech lost coherency, and his various different actions in acting out the story made him look utterly ridiculous, and it became clear that he was not making much sense.

"Ha, and then we were safe," the Little Yellow Fish said with a sigh, "But then this seagull came, and it was this is this and that is that."

"Seagull?" Triton said in shock, causing Flounder to gasp and place his pectoral fins over his mouth, as he realised that he said too much, and he quickly swam behind Ariel, hiding underneath her long red hair, even as his mermaid friend turned and gave him a brief glare, "What?"

"Ariel?" Attina enquired, as she shot her sister a worryingly questioning look, "Please tell me you didn't…"

She then trailed off, not wanting to finish her sentence, since she already knew the answer.

"Oh, you went up to the surface again, didn't you, didn't you?" Triton concluded, as he confirmed his eldest daughter's worst fears, and anger started to flood his tone with each passing second as he moved closer to his daughter.

"Nothing… happened," Ariel said with a shrug, and mimicked her earlier pose when she had tried to explain how she forgot about the concert, and a small smile adorned her face, much like a smile of a child that had just been caught doing something they were not supposed to be doing.

"Oh, Ariel, how many times must we go through this?" Triton said in clear tired frustration as he slapped a hand over his forehead, having had this argument with her on more than one occasion before, and in truth, he was becoming rather sick of having to repeat himself, "You could've been seen by one of those barbarians, by, by one of those… h-humans."

As he spoke he got up off his throne and started to move from side to side in front of his daughter in a manner of a human pacing up and down.

"Daddy, they're not all barbarians!" Ariel said in protest, shooting her father a glare of her own, and made an assertive gesture.

"They're dangerous," Triton went on, as he turned to regard Ariel, either having not heard or choosing to ignore his daughter's protest, "Do you think I want to see my youngest daughter snared by some fish-eater's hook?"

As he spoke, he brought his hand to just underneath Ariel's chin and gently lifted her head up, so that she could see the look of worry in his eyes. As far as Triton was concerned, humans were nothing more than fish-eating barbarians. Ariel had not seen the sorts of things that humans were capable of like he had. She had no idea just how dangerous they could be, and with that in mind, he was determined that she was not going to fall victim to their barbaric ways. It was humans that were responsible for Athena's death, and he swore that could never forgive them for that. Ariel was too young to remember, but before Athena died, Triton was content taking periodic trips to the surface, but the day Athena died, a group of humans had found them and attacked them, and in the chaos when the mer-folk tried to flee, Athena had been crushed to death by that confounded huge contraption of theirs. Every time he thought about that day and the humans that had attacked them, he felt a deep passionate fury fill his heart as the events played out over and over in his mind. He did not want any of his daughters to experience what their mother had experienced and that's why he forbade them from going to the surface.

Unfortunately, Ariel did not seem to get the message and she continued to defy him, and he was becoming sick and tired of it. Can't she see that he was only looking out for her safety?

"I'm sixteen-years-old, I'm not a child anymore," Ariel said, shaking her head away from her father's hand and backed away, all the while, giving him a rather defiant and frustrated glare.

When it came to issues regarding the surface world and humans, it was a flashpoint that caused her relationship with her father to strain. She felt that he was treating her like a child. In her opinion, her father was overly paranoid. She used to believe him, and she was just as afraid of humans as her father was, since she knew that they had been responsible for her mother's death, and that was despite being interested in their many contraptions. However, she remembered that she once saw a human rescue a dolphin that had been caught in a fishing net, though, at first when she saw him with that metal blade weapon, she had initially believed that the man in question had been intending to kill the dolphin, but instead, he had cut the dolphin free, and even helped calm it down afterwards before it went on its way. It had shown Ariel that not all humans were alike. Sure there were probably some who were barbarians, just like her father said, but not all of them.

Unfortunately trying to convince her father of this was like trying to negotiate with a brick wall. Whenever she tried to convince him that he was wrong in his assumptions, in that all humans were the same, Triton just refused to listen to reason and always dismissed her claims as idealistic nonsense and very much like her father, she was becoming rather sick and tired of it. Ariel just wished that her father would wise up and realise that just because he was the King of the Sea, that did not mean that he was right about everything all the time.

However, she knew where all the humans' fishing grounds were and steered well clear of them. She knew better than to try her luck with them. She mostly explored shipwrecks in the nearby graveyard, and Scuttle's island home was nowhere near any human habitation, so with that in mind, she believed that her father was just being paranoid.

"So what, age has nothing to do with it, Ariel," Attina scolded, making it clear that she was siding with their father, as she shot her sister a rather disappointed and scolding glare, as she brought Ariel out of her thoughts and back to reality, "I'm twenty-two-years-old and if I had gone to the surface, I'd be getting the same lecture you are right now."

"No one asked you, so butt out, Attina," Ariel replied in a rather rude tone, as she shot Attina a rather rude glare, causing her elder sister to flinch like she had been scolded for something she did wrong.

While it was true that Ariel did indeed love her big sister, since Attina did look out for her in the past, Ariel's main frustration with Attina was that she felt that the Crown Princess, Attina was taking her position too seriously. Sure, Ariel was aware that Attina's biggest fear was letting their father down and getting on his bad side. However, what frustrated the red-haired princess about her older sister was that she felt that Attina had degenerated into becoming their father's personal Yes-Girl.

Attina would always take their father's side in an argument, no matter what, and in Ariel's opinion, paid him lip service and only told him exactly what he wanted to hear. Like she had said before, Attina seemed like a sycophant. Not once, since Ariel could remember, that Attina and their father had a disagreement, and in truth, it really annoyed her just how Attina seemed to always just go with what their father said. Even when Attina got into trouble, like when she had joined Ariel and her sisters had gone to that underground music club before the lifting of the music ban, instead of standing up to him, Attina had just taken her punishment and accepted it, and what hurt Ariel the most was that her older sister had even admonished her for standing up to their father when she had voiced her opposition to him and demanded an explanation as to why music was banned.

"That's enough!" Triton said before Attina could reply, and Ariel was brought out of her thoughts, as he shot his youngest daughter a rather furious glare, "She is right though; age has nothing to do with it, so don't you take that tone of voice with me, young lady."

"Well…" Ariel started to say, as she turned to regard her father, hoping that he would see sense.

"As long as you live under my ocean, you will obey my rules," Triton said in a sternly strict tone of finality, meaning that further argument was impossible; not that it stopped Ariel from trying to get a word in, as he pointed at himself with his thumb to emphasise his point.

"But if you would just listen!" Ariel spoke up after letting out a forceful sigh of frustration beforehand, and shot her father a glare of her own.

"NOT ANOTHER WORD!" Triton stated in a loud and angry voice in a tone that basically said, "End of Discussion", as he turned away from his daughter and thrust his hand out to his side to emphasise his point, and then he turned to regard her once again, all the while maintaining his glare so that she could not get a word in, "AND I AM NEVER, NEVER TO HEAR OF YOU GOING TO THE SURFACE AGAIN, IS that clear?"

Ariel suddenly looked as if she was going to continue her defiance as she briefly considered standing up to her father and telling him exactly what she thought of his attitude and his rules to his face, but seeing the furious look in Triton's eyes caused her to think better of it, and she knew that continual defiance would only get her into more trouble, and not only that, but knowing her father, if she said what she wanted to say, she just knew that she would rather quickly end up regretting it in the end. For a moment, it looked as if she was going to break down and cry, but then she just let out a rather furious and frustrated sigh of grudging defeat and turned and swam out of the throne room in the manner of a human storming out of a room, and Flounder followed her out.

However, Attina saw the look in Ariel's eye before she thought better of standing up to their father and it concerned her.

"Somehow, I get the feeling that this isn't going to end well," she thought to herself, as she continued to stare after her little sister with a worried look on her face.

"Humph, teenagers," Sebastian said from the left side of the throne, watching Ariel and Flounder leave, as Triton sat back down on his throne with a sad look on his face and his trident in his left hand, and rested his chin on his right; fearing that he had been too harsh on his youngest daughter, "Dey t'ink dey know everything, you give dem an inch, and dey swim all over you."

"Do you… uh; think I was too hard on her?" Triton said in a worried tone as he turned to regard his number two and Attina flinched, despite not being the one that was being spoken to.

That was one of Triton's biggest fears; being too hard on his daughters, especially Ariel. Before Athena died, both he and Ariel had a nice, happy and close relationship, but after Athena died and he had become embittered, their relationship had started to strain for some reason or other. In the beginning, it was because of the music ban and the fact that he had her and her sisters adhere to a strict inflexible routine that had caused her to become rather depressed and bored. Now it was the issue of humans and the surface world that was causing strain in their relationship. It seemed to him that no matter how many problems that caused his relationship with his youngest daughter to strain were resolved, the next one was already there, lined up, and waiting to take the place of the old one.

Whenever one problem was resolved, he and Ariel would have a brief period of happiness in rekindling their damaged relationship, but then, another problem would come along and the process would repeat itself and he was becoming tired of it, and also fearful. Yes, he and Ariel clashed, and his anger over her continual defiance of him was due to the fact that he was worried about her. However, when disciplining her, he feared that someday he was going to let his anger get the best of him and go too far, and as a result, his relationship with Ariel would become damaged beyond any hope of repair.

"Definitely not," Sebastian said with a seriously stern look on his face, unaware of his liege's inner thoughts, and had his pincers on the sides of his shell as if he were a human with his hands on his hips, "Why, if Ariel was my daughter, I'd show her who was boss."

"How do you intend to do that?" Attina questioned curiously.

"Well for starters, none of this, flipping to de surface and oder such nonsense," Sebastian explained as he swam upwards and used his pincers to mimicking the flipping of a fish's fins at the sides, "No sir, I'd keep her under tight control."

As he continued to speak, Triton brought his hand up to his chin as he considered what Sebastian was saying and Attina looked on curiously, wondering just what he was planning.

"You're absolutely right, Sebastian," the King said as, thinking it over and how defiant Ariel was becoming that the little crab had a point.

"Of course," Sebastian said in agreement.

"Ariel needs constant supervision," the Sea King went on, as he brought his head down towards Sebastian.

"Constant," Sebastian said with a nod, as he folded his pincers in front of him like a human folding their arms.

"Someone to watch over her," Triton continued to go on, "To keep her out of trouble."

"All de time," Sebastian said, as he continued to agree with his liege.

"And you are just the crab to do it," the Sea King concluded, and he quickly, but gently thrust his index finger into the little crab's shell, causing Sebastian to stumble backwards a bit as he looked up at his liege and gasped in shock.

"What, me?" he said in pure disbelief, having not anticipated that he would be the one assigned to guarding Ariel.

"Yes Sebastian," Attina said with a rather wickedly taunting smile on her face, "Since you talk a big game, Daddy and I would like to see you back it up."

From the look on the Crown Princess's face, it was clear that she did not think that he was capable of doing it and seemed to just be going along with it just for the pleasure of seeing him screw up. Yes, there were times when Triton's daughters reminded the little red crab of the Mediterranean Princesses.

* * *

><p>A little while later, Sebastian was walking away from the throne room down a corridor lined with columns on either side as he chided himself for his own big mouth.<p>

"How do I get myself into dese situations?" he unhappily mused to himself, "I should be writing symphonies; not tagging along after some stubbornly headstrong rebellious teenager."

When he voiced his opinion of Ariel needing someone to constantly watch over her and keep her out of trouble, he had most certainly not anticipated that he would be the one who would be assigned such a task. He had originally believed that his liege would have had someone else see to it, but unfortunately for him, Triton must have misunderstood him, in that he believed that by voicing his opinion, he was, in effect volunteering and that was not the case. Nonetheless, there was nothing he could do about it.

However, before he could muse further on his misfortune, since in the past, Ariel never listened to him anyway, and mostly dragged him along for the ride against he wishes, he noticed both Ariel and Flounder outside to his left and Flounder had Ariel's collecting bag in his mouth, and he handed it to Ariel, and both looked around cautiously, obviously checking to make sure that they were not seen before they both swam off away from the Palace.

"Hmm," Sebastian said curiously, as he jumped up and started swimming after them, moving like a human perform the front stroke, clearly suspicious about whatever it was Ariel was planning, "What is dat girl up to?"

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, not that far away, Fritz was swimming towards Atlantica with Marina's five sisters, and Regatta was swimming ahead of the rest, still unhappy that they had contributed to the ruination of the concert… well; really she was still angry over their treatment of Sebastian.<p>

"Hey, Regatta, wait up," Tida called out, as she quickened her pace.

"I'm still not happy about your conduct," the eldest sister said, as she shot all four of her sisters a rather embarrassed glare.

"Oh, come off it, we were only having some fun," Aquaria spoke up with a scoff.

"Yeah, and mocking him's the only way to have fun with Basto," Corolla added in a feign attempt to justify her and her three other sisters' behaviour.

"I honestly can't believe how insensitive you four are," Regatta scolded with a frustrated sigh, as she continued to glare at her sisters, "Honestly, why can't you all just grow up? Do you realise that you all came across as a group of bullies? You hurt his feelings. That's why I'm upset."

"But, you didn't seem to mind joining us in the past," Submara pointed out, as she vaguely recalled their trips to Atlantica in the past.

"As I pointed out before, unlike you four, I grew up," Regatta replied, shaking her head before she turned to regard Fritz, "Fritz, didn't you hate mer-people at one point?"

"Well, before I met Marina, yes, I did," the dolphin calf admitted with a nod, as he became curious as to what Regatta was getting at, "But what has that got to do with anything?"

"Why did you hate mer-people?" Regatta asked simply, ignoring Fritz's question.

"Well, to tell you the truth, I was under the impression that mer-folk were a bunch of stuck-up snobs that swam around like they owned the ocean and that they believed that all other sea life existed for their benefit," the young calf replied, deciding to go along with his best friend's sister for the time being.

"So basically, the reason you hated mer-people was because you believed that they were full of themselves and believed that all other sea life was beneath them, is that it?" Regatta asked with a sharp look on her face, her anger over her sisters' behaviour making her sound more intimidating than she intended to be.

"Yes, I suppose that's another way of putting it," Fritz admitted with a nod, "But what has that got to do with anything? I'll admit, when I first met Marina, I was mean to her because a past incident concerning a group of mermen was still fresh in my mind, but Marina proved me wrong."

"Thank you, Fritz," Regatta said with a nod, as her look softened, and she gave the young dolphin an apologetic look for dragging him into her quarrel with her sisters, but then turned back to glare as her sisters and folded her arms over her chest, "Did you all hear that?"

The four other mermaids all nodded in unison and Regatta nodded in satisfaction, but the glare did not leave her face.

"Now, tell me, how is what you four did to Sebastian any different from what Fritz just said about his opinion of mer-people," the Mediterranean Crown Princess went on to ask her sisters, "Let me put this to you another way, do you all consider Sebastian beneath you because he's not a merman?"

"Oh, so that's what she was getting at," Fritz thought, and then opened his mouth to add his own opinion, but just then he noticed Ariel and Flounder swimming in front of him, though they were quite a distance away.

"Huh, now who do you suppose that is?" Submara asked, having also seen Ariel and Flounder, though, in truth, she and the rest of her sisters were desperate to change the subject, since Regatta was doing a really good job of making them regret their behaviour and making them feel low.

"No idea," Aquaria said with a shrug, "But, I have to say that she's the spitting image of Queen Athena. Heck, if I didn't know any better, I probably would have mistaken her for Queen Athena herself."

"Princess Ariel," Fritz gasped, unknowingly speaking aloud, though, he was surprised to hear that she was the spitting image of the former queen, since he had no idea what Athena had looked like, "I wonder what she's up to."

"What, Princess Ariel, the no-show from the concert?" Corolla said curiously.

"Unless there's another Princess called Ariel, I should say that, yeah, it probably is," Tida said, as she swam off towards Ariel, curious as to what she was up to, but stopped to look back at her green-haired sister, "And since she looks like a younger version of Queen Athena, I think that it's safe to assume that she is Triton's daughter."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Regatta protested in surprise, as Tida then swam off and the rest of her sisters, minus Regatta, all followed suit.

However, the other four mermaids just ignored her, causing her to let out a rather furious groan of frustration.

"Since when did butting into other people's business become normal for them?" she wondered furiously.

"I think they were just trying to avoid facing up to what you were trying to tell them, Princess Regatta," Fritz said, as both he and Regatta chased after them.

"Yeah, you're probably right," Regatta admitted grudgingly with a sigh of defeat.

It did not take long to catch up with the other four, who kept their distance as they followed Ariel and Flounder to an undersea cave entrance that was blocked by a huge boulder and above the entrance was quite a wide ledge attached to an undersea hill.

"Hey, look who it is," Tida said, trying to stifle a laugh, as she pointed down at a nearby rock.

The others all looked down and saw Sebastian crawl up on the rock with his pincers resting on the rock while he panted for breath.

"Gee, I wonder what he's doing," Corolla wondered to herself aloud.

"Probably chasing after Princess Ariel, again," Fritz thought to himself, as he remembered several of Sebastian's fruitless attempts in the past to prevent Princess Ariel from going on another adventure, only for him to be grudgingly dragged into it.

Nonetheless, Fritz and the five foreign princesses all watched as Ariel pulled the boulder to the left, all the while, from her posture, it was clear that she was trying not to draw attention to herself. Anyway, once the entrance was exposed, Flounder swam in and Ariel followed him in, and the boulder started to fall back into its original position, and Sebastian quickly made a beeline for the entrance, intending to get through before the boulder covered the entrance.

Unfortunately though, he did not quite make it, and the Fritz and the five Mediterranean Princesses watched as he became stuck with only his thrashing legs visible, it was clear that he had gotten stuck.

* * *

><p>Unfortunately for Sebastian, he had not managed to get through before the boulder had fallen back in place and he now found himself pinned between the boulder and the side of the cave entrance. However, this did not stop him from trying to push himself free. Placing his pincers down on the rock that he was pinned against, he pushed down on them, while also pushing forward and when that did not work, he used his pincers to grab the leaf of a nearby small sea plant and pulled at it, all the while, trying to move himself forwards. However, somehow, his prayers seemed to be answered as the boulder pinning him in place seemed to move on its own accord. Unfortunately, for him though, the momentum he had gathered in his attempt to free himself caused him to go bouncing across the seafloor until he banged into something that felt unfamiliar.<p>

"Oops, sorry, Sebastian," a familiar, and unwelcome voice came, causing Sebastian to turn while he was rubbing his head and he gasped in shock at seeing the five Mediterranean Princess all filing into the cave along with a small blue dolphin that he did not recognise.

"I guess the hourglass stopped him," the dolphin said, motioning his head towards the object that Sebastian had bumped into, and Sebastian turned back to regard the object and his eyes widened in shock at seeing it.

He did not know what it was, but he did know enough to know that it was a human-made object.

"Huh?" he said, as he looked further into the cavern and became filled with horror and disbelief at what he saw.

Light shone in from the surface through a small gap at the top of the cavern, bathing the room in a beautifully spectacular and peaceful-feeling white glow. The walls of the cavern were formed of a series of ledges on all sides that ascended the length of the cavern itself and on those ledges were row upon row of various human-made items, some of which appeared to glisten, glitter and sparkle as the light shone on them.

"Wow, what is this place?" Aquaria whispered in wonder.

"Beat's me," Submara whispered with a shrug.

"So, this must be where she stores all those various human items she's collected," Fritz thought to himself, knowing that Princess Ariel had collected various human things in the past.

However, this was actually the first time he had actually seen where she stored them. In the past, whenever he followed her, he had always been careful did not follow her whenever she came in close proximity to Atlantica, in case he was seen, and so, he had no idea this place had existed. However, seeing the inside of the cavern amazed him. He did not know what it was. Perhaps it was the light that shone in from gap in the ceiling, perhaps it was the various different kinds of human objects that the light shone off, but there was definitely something pleasantly serene and peaceful about this place. It was the sort of place that one could just go to escape their problems and think things over.

"Ariel, are you okay?" Flounder's concerned voice came, bringing Fritz and the five mermaids out of their thoughts, as they turned to see Ariel lying on a rock while looking at the dinner fork she had collected earlier that day.

In front of her was a grey, but beautifully decorated candelabra with a dinner knife and a dinner spoon on two of the three prongs.

"So, despite being told that the "dinglehopper" is a hairbrush, she somehow realises that it goes hand-in-hand with the knife and spoon," Fritz thought, as he remembered listening to Scuttle's explanation about the dinner fork, and remembered just how gullible Ariel had been while listening to him, and yet, she seemed to know that it belonged with the other two items on the candelabra.

Anyway, Ariel looked rather depressed and Flounder was staring at her with a look of concern.

"If only I could make him understand," Ariel said in a depressed tone, as she continued to look at the "dinglehopper", unaware of the intruders, and Sebastian placed is pincers over his mouth in shocked disbelief, as he held back a gasp, "I just don't see things the way he does."

"Must've had another argument with her father," Fritz mused to himself in realisation, since he did know that Ariel and Triton often clashed whenever the issue of humans and the surface world came up.

"I don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things…" Ariel went on, pausing briefly, as she turned to face her friend, "Could be bad."

* * *

><p>"Who's she talking about?" Aquaria whispered to her sisters.<p>

"Must be her father, King Triton," Regatta replied, keeping her voice down at a low volume.

Everyone else all nodded in agreement, since they did know that King Triton did not like humans or the surface world in the very least; not since the death of Queen Athena, though, from what they were seeing, it was soon becoming apparent that not all his daughters agreed with him.

* * *

><p>Sebastian managed to make his way between two objects, even if it was just to get away from the five unwelcome princesses and looked on, curious as to what Ariel was going to do, but was also waiting for an opportunity to confront her about all those human things that were on display.<p>

* * *

><p>"Look at this stuff, isn't it neat?" Ariel started to sing as she placed the dinner fork on the centre prong of the candelabra, "Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has everything?"<p>

She then paused briefly as she looked up at the gap in the ceiling and round the entire cavern before she started to sing again.

"Look at this trove, treasures untold, how many wonders can one cavern hold, lookin' around here, you'd think," she then paused again and turned to regard the five intruding mermaids and dolphin, causing them to gasp in surprise.

"Um…" Fritz started to say, pondering on how he was going to explain their presence.

"Sure," Ariel said with an uncaring shrug, choosing to ignore the intruders for whatever reason, and continued to sing, "She's got everything."

She then swam upwards to higher in the cavern.

"I've get gadgets and gizmos of plenty," the red-haired mermaid continued to sing, taking two objects attached to small ropes in her hands brief before releasing them with another shrug and a brief small, yet funny looking smile.

* * *

><p>"I've got whozits and whatzits galore," Ariel went on singing as Sebastian saw her swim somewhere else in the cavern and looked through a pair of circular specs, hoping that they would help magnify the scene in front of him, since he could not see what was going on properly.<p>

* * *

><p>"You want thing-a-ma-bobs, I got twenty," Ariel sang as she swam up to Flounder with a box in her arms and opened it with a smile on her face, causing Flounder to look excitedly inside at various different human objects, "But why cares, no big deal, I want more."<p>

As she sang she closed the box and put it off to the side, and her smile dropped to a rather depressed look and she then leaned on a rock and looked up at the gap in the ceiling with a longing look in her eyes.

* * *

><p>"She may not have shown up at the concert, but I think it's safe to say that her sisters were right about her voice," Corolla whispered to her sisters and Fritz, who were all mesmerised but the red-haired mermaid's beautifully angelic sounding voice.<p>

"I'll say," Regatta admitted with a nod, "Not to be disrespectful towards Marina, but I think that she could definitely outdo Marina in a singing contest."

Everyone else, Fritz included, could not help but nod.

Despite his love for his friend, Fritz had heard Marina sing before as a member of the audience during her Coming-Of-Age Ceremony and she was pretty good, but as much as he did not want to betray her, he did have to admit that listening to Ariel sing, well… he had to say that if he had to compare Marina's voice with Ariel's, then Ariel definitely had the better singing voice.

"Yeah, and I have to say that hearing this song, it more than makes up for that fact that she failed to turn up for her musical debut at the concert," Submara put in, and once again, everyone nodded.

"She takes after her mother, you know," Regatta explained, as she remembered more of their time in Atlantica, back before Queen Athena's death, "If I remember correctly, Queen Athena also had a beautiful singing voice."

"Yeah, I remember that as well," Corolla said with a nod, as she also remembered Queen Athena's singing voice.

"I guess her appearance isn't the only thing she inherited from her mother," Aquaria surmised, as she looked towards the red-haired princess.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, Sebastian had moved to a clear part of the cavern and looked up at Ariel, wondering just why she was singing, though, he did have to admit that Ariel's voice was indeed suited to singing. Like he had told Triton back at the concert, Ariel did indeed have the most beautiful voice, and he was not kidding about that. She definitely took after her mother in the singing department.<p>

* * *

><p>"I wanna be where the people are," Ariel went on to sing, looking somewhat depressed, "I wanna see…"<p>

She then looked up and swam over to where a music box with the dancing figures of a man and woman was situated.

"Wanna see 'em dancin'," she went on singing and then briefly touched the woman figure's leg that was outstretched, spinning the two figures round as the box played a few notes, "Walkin' around on those… what do you call them?"

As she sang, she turned to face Flounder, who followed her, and then he wagged his caudal fin at her.

"Oh… feet," she said, as she took the edges of her friend's caudal fin and gentle mimicked feet walking, eliciting a small laugh from Flounder, who was rather ticklish whenever played with his tail.

* * *

><p>"Humph," Sebastian sulked in annoyance, not looking too pleased at what he had heard, as he leaned on a book and had a pincer resting on his chin with the elbow resting on the book.<p>

* * *

><p>"Flippin' your fins, you get too far," Ariel continued singing, as she flipped her caudal fin to emphasise her point and swam around in a small circle, "Legs are require for jumpin' an' dancin'…"<p>

As she sang, Flounder mimicked his mermaid friend's action as he swam on his back with his pectoral fins clasped behind his head and then swam into Ariel, who grabbed his pectoral fins and, releasing left fin, brought him to her left side while still holding his right pectoral fin.

"Strollin' along down a…" she went on singing with her right hand on her hip and swaying her hips as she moved forwards, all the while, still holding on to Flounder, as she did her best interpretation of walking down a street before coming to an abrupt stop as she ponder her next line, "What's that word again… street."

She then started to swim up the cavern as she spun in circles, still holding onto Flounder, who followed her movements.

"Up where they walk, up where run, up where they stay all day in the sun," she continued to sing, finally releasing Flounder, as she continues to spin in circles, just barely avoiding swimming right into a shawl of fish that swam by in front of her, and Flounder, despite being released, continued to follow his friend with his pectoral fins outstretched as he also swam in a circle right Ariel, "Wanderin' free, wish I could be, Part of that World."

She then briefly looked up at the gap in the ceiling as her spinning came to a stop and Flounder had swam right up till he was level with her head.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Ariel, Flounder, Fritz and the five mermaids, who were all entranced by Ariel's beautifully angelic voice, Sebastian had decided to move elsewhere, but he did not take his eyes off Ariel. However, he came up to huge blue round object that cast a huge reflection of himself and when he turned to see where he was going, he came face to face his own glare that was reflected off the object and unaware that the huge angry looking eyes were his own, he gasped in fright and quickly backed up, unfortunately backing up into a lidded mug lying on its side, and the force of his entry caused the lid to close.<p>

* * *

><p>"What would I give if I could live out of these waters?" Ariel continued singing, unaware of Sebastian's presence as she descended back down to the seafloor, "What would I pay to spend a day warn on the sand?"<p>

As she sang, she landed on the floor on her back with a happy expression on her face, and she mimicked a human sunbathing on the beach.

"Betcha on land, they understand," she continued, as Flounder used his body to dig into the soil and partially bury himself, and Ariel got up, resting her elbow on the seafloor and rested her cheek on her hand and then got up, looking on a random direction, "That they don't reprimand their daughters…"

She then turned her head to face the six intruders and gave them a look as if she believed that they were agreeing with what she was singing about.

"Bright young women… sick of swimmin'," she continued to sing, as she turned to look up round the cavern, "And ready to stand."

She then swam back up the cavern in a loop-de-loop fashion before swimming up and reaching for a book.

"And ready to know what the people know," she went on, her voice sounding rather excited, as both she and Flounder briefly glanced at the book's text; with Flounder having a smile on his face, "Askin' my questions, and get some answers…"

As she sang, she held the book close to her chest as she regarded Flounder.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, the mug that contained Sebastian had started to roll along the cavern's ledges, as the little crab tried in vain to free himself.<p>

* * *

><p>"What's a fire and why does it… what's the word…?" Ariel continued, as she and Flounder had swum over to a picture of a man with a candle on the table and Ariel stared questioningly at the candle's flame, "Burn?"<p>

She then had her hands over her heart as she sang that last word with a yearning look on her face.

"When's it my turn, wouldn't I love…?" she went on as she started to swim up towards the gap in the ceiling, as her song was drawing to its conclusion, "Love to explore that shore up above?"

As she reached the gap in the ceiling, she reached up her hand towards the surface. However, the gap was too small her to fit through and looking up at the surface, she suddenly felt a wave of sadness and crippling depression that threatened to overwhelm her, as looking up at the surface seemed to bring her back to reality, and she found herself having to accept that as a mermaid wanting to walk on land, she was no doubt thinking about an empty dream.

"Out of the sea…" Ariel said as she struggled to contain a small sob, her expression becoming rather depressed as reality continued to sink in her mind, and started to descend back to the seafloor, "Wish I… could… be…"

Flounder and the others all looked on, as the last few words made Ariel's change in mood rather apparent and they could not help but sympathise with her and Corolla found herself struggling to prevent herself from crying.

"Part of that… World," Ariel concluded as she continued to stare up at the gap in the ceiling with a look of longing in her eyes, making it clear of what her desire was.

"Wow, she's more like Marina than I originally thought," Fritz thought to himself.

Like Marina, she had a burning passion to experience life on the surface, if her song was any indication. Listening to Ariel's song had really opened the dolphin calf's eyes and given him an insight into the mermaid's desires. They said that music was an effective means of expressing one's self and after listening to Ariel's song, he had to admit that he found truth in that. He did wonder, though, if Ariel wanted to become human like Marina, because it sounded that that's what she was really wanting.

However, before anyone could think of what to do next, the sound of metal slamming into stone caught everyone's attention and they turned to see a mug roll down and slam against some of the ledges on the walls before smashing completely, revealing Sebastian, who fell on top of a Jack-in-the-Box that popped out, sending the little crab flying.

"Ah, ouch!" Sebastian exclaimed as he desperately grabbed onto a tablecloth, but the momentum of his descent caused him to accidently pull the cloth down with him and everything that was on top of the cloth fell down on top of him.

"Even eleven years later, that Basto sure cracks me up," Submara laughed as she rudely pointed at the clutter that Sebastian was under, earning a glare from Regatta.

"Huh, Sebastian?" Ariel said, as she came up to over the clutter that Sebastian was fighting to free himself from.

"Are you alright?" Regatta asked in concern, as she swam over and lifted the clutter to reveal that Sebastian had gotten a diamond ring caught round his neck and a yellow thimble caught in the last two of his left legs.

She then moved to pick him up to help him out, but Sebastian violently thrashed his pincers at her as he glared furiously at her.

"I don't need your help!" he exclaimed angrily, as he glared at her furiously, causing the foreign princess to back away with a sad sigh, since she knew that Sebastian still did not trust her.

He then turned to regard Ariel, who either did not seem to mind or had chosen to ignore the six intruders.

"Ariel," he said in a low, yet furious tone, not helped by the fact that four of the five foreign mermaid princesses were rudely pointing and sniggering at him, "What are you…?"

As he tried to walk towards her, he found the thimble was caught behind two beads of a beaded necklace.

"How could you… ooh," he went on, trying his best to ignore his current situation, "What is all dis?"

He then lifted the rear legs with the thimble caught in them and kicked the beads away.

"It's… uh… it's just my collection," Ariel explained with a rather nervous laugh.

"Oh, ho, I see, your collection…" Sebastian said with a sarcastic grin on his face, appearing deceptively calm, as lifting his pincer revealed that he had also gotten tangled up in the line of a fishing rod before he returned to glaring at her and proceeded to rant, "If your fader knew about dis place…!"

As he ranted, he threw away the fishing hook along with the string and then took off the diamond ring and threw it away as well, though, he was more angry over his own misfortune combined with the unwanted presence of the five Mediterranean Princesses rather than the fact that he had just discovered that Ariel had been collecting human things and was hiding them from her father.

"You're not going to tell him, are you?" Flounder said, interrupting him, as he swam right up in the little crab's face with a fearful look in his eyes, but his eyes also held the hint of a threat of what he would do to Sebastian if he ever told Triton.

"Oh, please Sebastian, he would never understand," Ariel said, swimming over to join Flounder with a pleading look on her face, her hands almost clasped together in a manner of someone praying.

That much was true. Ariel knew that her father hated humans and everything to do with humans, and that included human objects. As far as he was concerned, human objects would spell the end of their civilisation. She remembered one time she had discovered a human object that she had dubbed, a thingamajigger and when her father saw it, he demanded that she get rid of it, though, a misunderstanding had everyone assume that it was some kind of human weapon and both the Lobster Mobster and the Evil Manta had both sought to use the thingamajigger to take over Atlantica, but Ariel had gone up to the surface to learn about the thingamajigger and had learned that it was not a weapon at all, but something that humans used to cover their feet and taking two of them, she had managed to scare off the Evil Manta, taking advantage of his ignorance of what the thingamajigger actually was, though, Triton still demanded that she get rid of all the thingmajiggers afterwards, though he grudgingly let her off the hook for disobeying him, since it was because of her disobedience that they learned that the thingamajigger was harmless, though, Ariel had to wonder if her father was just suffering from a case of wounded pride.

Another incident involved her bringing home another human object that she had dubbed a biggermajigger, due to making things appear bigger whenever anyone looked through it. Her father had discovered it, and in a rage, destroyed it, causing her to effectively run… or in this case, swim away from home and she ended up discovering another human object that had gotten stuck to her wrist, and remembering her father and his threats of what he would do if he caught her with another human thing in her possession, she had not returned home and remained out in the wilderness, though she had ended up getting sucked down to the Great Abyss when she remembered that she needed a part of the object that had broken off when she retrieved it. Thankful, back then, she had managed to mend things with her father when he came to retrieve her, after Flounder told him what happened, and in the end, the human object was lost down in the Great Abyss, and it was one object that she was glad to be rid of, for all the trouble it had put her through. However, afterwards, Sebastian had told her how her father had practiced apologising to her for flying into a rage, and how his apologies always degenerated into him trying to justify himself.

"Ariel," Sebastian said, as he calmed down and sprouted a cheesy looking grin on his face and made "calm down" gestures with his pincers, and as he continued to speak he took her hand in his right pincer and started to lead her out of the cavern "You under a lot of pressure down here. Come with me and I'll take you home and get you something warm to drink."

"Drink?" a voice that Sebastian recognised as belonging to Aquaria came, accompanied by a laugh, "Boy, you must be stupid, Basto. We're underwater down here, something to drink…?"

"Mind your own business!" Sebastian screamed, as he turned to glare at the purple haired mermaid, unknowingly releasing Ariel in the process.

However, before anyone could reply, something moved over the gap in the ceiling, blocking off the light. Looking up, everyone noticed that it was not the gap; itself that was being blocked, but rather something travelling on the surface had moved over the gap and blocked the light.

"What do you suppose…?" Ariel started to say, as she started to swim towards the entrance and head for the surface, curious as to what it was that was on the surface with Flounder following her lead.

"Ariel?" Sebastian said in confusion before realisation dawned on him as to where Ariel was going, "Ariel!"

However, unfortunately for the little crab, Ariel had already exited the cavern and was swimming up towards the surface, and flashes of a variety of different colours exploded in the sky surrounding the object that Ariel now knew was a ship.

Sebastian tried to swim after her, but before he knew what was going on, he felt a pair of fingers clamp down on his body.

"Hey, what's de big idea?" he demanded, as he turned his head to see that Regatta had grabbed him, and this caused his temper to flare, "Put me down dis instant, I don't need, nor do I want your help! You five have caused me enough trouble as it is!"

"Oh, be quiet, Basto," Tida said, glaring at the little crab, as Regatta then reached for the thimble caught in his legs and gently removed it, "You really need to learn how to give gratitude."

"And don't call me Basto!" Sebastian replied, too angry to have heard the last part of the blue-haired mermaid's statement, and even if he did hear her, he would have been too angry to care, or even believe her for that matter, "My name is Sebastian! Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian! Dat is my name! Show me de proper respect!"

Regatta then quickly released him as he threatened to clamp in pincers down on her fingers, and then he he furiously spun round and swam after Ariel.

"Boy, he really has gratitude problems," Submara said, sounding somewhat insulted, "You remove that thimble from his legs and he doesn't even say "t'ank you", what a grouch."

"Well, considering what we did to him in the past and how you four had treated him since the concert, I can't say I'm all that surprised," Regatta said sorrowfully in understanding, as she spun round and shot her four sisters a glare.

"Boy, don't you think that it's odd that she noticed us, and yet, she seemed to ignore us?" Aquaria wondered aloud, remembering that Ariel had noticed them during her song, and yet, continued to sing without confronting them as to why they were there, though, in truth, she really was desperate to change the subject, getting sick and tired of Regatta's anger over how they had treated Sebastian.

"Yeah, I have to admit that that is unusual," Fritz said, putting in his two cents before he swam off and headed for the surface after Ariel, Flounder and Sebastian.

"Well, maybe she just didn't want to stop singing," Corolla suggested, and her sisters all nodded in agreement.

"That's pretty stupid, if you ask me," Tida spoke up, voicing her opinion, "Considering that it's been eleven years since we were last here, I highly doubt that she recognises us. The fact is, she had her guard down while in the presence of, as far as she's probably concerned, complete strangers, and complete strangers intruding in her private place. Supposing that it wasn't us and it was someone intending to do her harm."

"Who knows?" Regatta said with a shrug before she started to swim out of the cavern, but then stopped and turned back to regard her sisters, "Anyway, since there's no point in staying here, I think we ought to leave."

Her sisters all nodded and followed her as she swam out of the cavern.

"Now that I think of it, I think I remember a younger Princess Ariel," the Mediterranean Crown Princess thought to herself, as she managed to recall more and more of memories of her and her sisters' time in Atlantica eleven years previously, "Yes, I do seem to remember that she and Marina seemed to hit it off, though I doubt either of them would remember one another."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, Ariel had come up to the surface, and using her hand, to brush aside some strands of hair that entered her field of vision, she could not help but let out a small gasp of awe and amazed astonished as she witnessed the ship slowly sailing on the water as streaks of colour shot up into the sky at various different angles before dispersing into sparks, and then vanishing. She then let out a rather playful giggle as Flounder and Sebastian both emerged from under the water.<p>

"Ariel, what are you…?" Sebastian started to ask with a hint of frustration in his voice, clearly not too happy with the red-haired princess's behaviour; however, a flash of colour grabbed his attention and he turned to see the ship on the water.

"Wow, cool," Flounder exclaimed in a mood similar to Ariel's.

"Jumpin' jellyfish!" Sebastian exclaimed with a gasp of shock, disbelief and a small hint of fear, as he brief jumped out the water.

"Those colourful things are called fireworks," Ariel explained to the little crab, either unaware or choosing to ignore the fact that he probably did not care, "Scuttle says that humans use them for celebrations, though, once they're lit, getting too close to them can be dangerous."

* * *

><p>"Well, what do you know?" Fritz mused to himself, having come up, poking his head out the water nearby, "I never thought I'd see the day that that birdbrained moronic seagull would actually get something right for once."<p>

He had to admit that that had been a bit of a shock. He knew what fireworks where. He was just surprised that Scuttle would, not only know the correct name for them, but also what they were for. Usually when listening to Scuttle, he usually made up names and only guessed what the various stuff Ariel brought to him did. To actually hear that he managed to get something right was a bit of a shock, but then again, it could be that Scuttle had known due to observing humans and heard the term, "fireworks" being mentioned by the humans.

"Brings back memories, though," he thought, as his mind wondered back to that night he and Marina had snuck out of the Merman Palace and went to the surface.

It had been the fireworks from the Prince's ship that had grabbed their attention just as he and Marina were about to go and explore further afield. However, remembering that faithful night caused him to shudder in sorrow, since it was the night that Marina had seen the Prince, which had in turned led to her becoming human and her subsequent exile.

"Ariel!" Sebastian's alarmed voice came, bringing the young dolphin calf out of his thoughts, "Ariel, please… come back!"

Looking at the scene in front of him, he saw that Ariel had left Sebastian and Flounder in the waves, as she swam towards the ship, jumping out of the water in the same manner as a dolphin, completely ignoring the crab's pleas. However, the waves served to move the little crab and fish away from their mermaid friend and just as Fritz was about to turn and follow Ariel, curious as to what she was up to, a soft thud grabbed his attention and he turned to see that Sebastian had hit the side of another ship.

"Huh, what the?" the dolphin calf said in shock, as he laid eyes on the ship with a look of shock and disbelief.

Despite it being night and the sky being dark, the fireworks from the first ship lit up the night sky perfectly, and so, Fritz managed to get a good look at the second ship, which had a long red streak painted along its middle part.

Swimming round to the back of the ship, Fritz could not help but let out a gasp of shock and disbelief as on the back of the ship, above the cabin windows on the right hand side of the ship was the carving of the number, nine and on the left side, opposite, was a carving of an inverted nine and in the centre between them was the carving of a strange looking plant with a red painted circle inside it.

"Oh no, I don't believe it," he said, loud enough, that if Ariel had still been nearby, she would have heard him, as he clearly recognsed the ship, "This can't be happening."

His shocked look quickly turned into an angry glare as he stared furiously up at the ship and swam round to the side.

"What's he… what's he doing here?" he practically spat, as he continued to glare up at the ship and as if to add insult to injury, the person in question emerged; short light brown hair and chocolate brown eyes and wearing the same blue caped shirt he had worn when Marina first saw him stood the Prince, who was looking out at the ship that was letting off the fireworks.

"No, this can't be happening," Fritz thought, frantically shaking his head as he clenched his eyes shut in a mixture of fury and panic, "How can he be here? Why's he here?"

As he looked back up at the Prince, he noticed that he was suddenly joined by a woman with long black hair and blue eyes, and she wore a white dress.

The young calf guessed that that woman had to be the woman that the Prince had chosen over Marina and his glare only intensified, as he continued to watch them, fury threatening to overwhelm him, as he remembered what the Prince had done to Marina.

"You got some nerve showing up here," Fritz thought to himself, too blinded by his fury to realise that the Prince probably did not know that Marina was probably somewhere nearby, and as far as he was concerned, he no doubt believed that she had probably drowned when she jumped off the back of his ship.

Fritz could honestly say that he hated the Prince. He hated the Prince with every fibre of his being. The Prince was the one he held responsible for Marina's predicament, despite the fact that he knew that it was really Marina, herself, that was to blame, since the Prince had no idea that she existed until he came across her by the riverbank, and even then, he had no idea that she had been a mermaid to begin with. Unfortunately, despite knowing this, Fritz could not help but blame him.

He figured that perhaps it was just because he just could not bring himself to blame Marina, and he just needed someone else to unleash his pent-up feelings on. Marina realised that she had made a mistake and was paying for it. Unfortunately, remembering Marina's suffering and how she wallowed in her own guilt and self-blame only served to infuriate the young dolphin calf even more and he directed his anger towards the Prince, since if Marina had not seen him, then she would not have gone to Devillia Del Ray in order to become human to begin with, and she would not have had to go through all that heartache and sorrow and almost die as a result.

As far as his feelings towards Marina sparing the Prince went, he was, he would admit, rather torn over that. Sure, like everyone else, he was glad that Marina had not killed him and become a murderer, but a more selfish part of him had been rather shocked. That part of him had been secretly hoping that she would do it, if for nothing else, just so he could have his friend back. He knew that it was wrong and selfish to think such things and yet, he just could not help himself. Since Marina left, he had become rather lonely, since none of Marina's sister had the time for him. He had been so desperate to get his friend back that he had not cared what price needed to be paid. Heck, if it had been possible, he would have done the deed himself, even if just spare Marina from having to go through with it herself.

However, he just knew that if he had done so, Marina would probably have ended up hating him, but that did not matter to him, just so long as she was happy and could live her life to its fullest, he did not care what happened to him. If Marina ended up hating him, but moved on with her life and ended up happy, that was fine with him. He essentially put Marina ahead of himself. Her happiness was all that mattered to him, even if that ment he had to be excluded from it.

"Just you stay away from Marina," he threatened silently in his mind, as he continued to glare up at the Prince, "You've already put her through enough heartache."

* * *

><p>Up on the ship, unaware of the young dolphin calf's hateful glare, Prince Fjord and his wife, Princess Cecilia of the Suomi Kingdom were both looking out at the other ship. However, Fjord suddenly focussed his attention on the water, as he thought he saw what appeared to be a red-haired mermaid with a green tail jumping out of the water as she made her way to towards the ship.<p>

"Is something wrong, Your Highness?" an elderly man with a huge nose and white bushy eyebrows and moustache asked him, as he came over to see what had caught the young prince's attention.

Fjord could not help but chuckle on the inside of his mind. Ironically, it was the same man that he had conversed with during his birthday party on board the ship that had sunk during that awful storm seven months ago. He thought he had saw a mermaid sitting on an iceberg and told the man, but the man assured him that he had just been seeing things; that the excitement of his birthday party was getting to him.

"No, it's just…" Fjord said, shaking his head before pausing slightly as he looked out and saw the fireworks reflecting off the surface of the sea, "I guess the fireworks reflecting off the water has got me hallucinating."

He then nodded; satisfied with that explanation, since he could no longer see the mermaid he thought he saw before.

"Yeah, that's it, the fireworks are making me see things," he concluded with another nod.

"Don't get too excited then," the man said, as he turned and walked off, satisfied with the Prince's explanation.

"You know, Fjord, if that was a hallucination, then it must've been a shared hallucination because I think I saw her to," Cecilia said, looking at her husband questioningly, "So I guess you don't have to worry about having mermaids on the brains."

Fjord flinched at that, despite Cecilia's tone of assurance. Any mention of the word, mermaid, and he was automatically reminded of the mysterious blonde-haired mute girl that he had dubbed, Princess Mermaid.

"Princess Mermaid," he thought, as his mind filled with deep rooted sorrow and regret, "I'm sorry."

It had been a few days after his near-death encounter at sea when the ship that his birthday party was being held on ran into a storm and he almost drowned. Back then, he had no idea how, but he had survived and assumed that he had been washed up on shore, where he was discovered by Cecilia and a group of girls from a nearby church. Anyway, a few days later, he had been looking out of the window of his home at the Summer Palace and noticed Princess Mermaid lying unconscious by the riverbank. Naturally, he had gone to help and was shocked to discover that she was completely devoid of clothing, and so, he had taken her into his care, hoping to help her out. Unfortunately, he also had discovered that she was a mute, not to mention completely illiterate, since she had been incapable of writing, but that did not matter to him, and so, he took her in as his ward.

He had given her the name, Princess Mermaid, a month later, after listening to her playing the harp and believed that her music had the sound of the sea in it, and he guessed that, given the circumstances in which he had found her, she had come from the sea, though he did not know how she came to be there. Her manners had been too polite to have been born a commoner and she possessed a massive pearl that she had pinned in her hair, and the pearl was so big that it put even the largest pearls in his mother's collection to shame. Nonetheless, he had taken a liking to her, though, he did not really love her in the way that he could say that he would marry her.

He did care for her, yes, but she came across as nothing more than a little sister to him. Back then, the girl he wanted to marry was none other than Cecilia, the girl he believed rescued him from the storm. Eventually, the day after he had rescued Princess Mermaid from a pack of wolves while horseback riding, the Lord Chamberlain had come and told him that his parents were demanding that he get married to the Princess of the Suomi Kingdom, but back then, he had no idea that the Princess and Cecilia were one and the same and had refused, despite the Lord Chamberlain's declaration that as King and Queen, his parents' word was absolute. Nonetheless, he refused to back down and confided in Princess Mermaid his desire to marry Cecilia, but then, he made his greatest mistake. He told the mute girl that if he could not find Cecilia, then he would marry her instead and he remembered how her face had beamed with hope at that.

Unfortunately, though, since he refused to play ball with his parents, they had tricked him into boarding a ship bound for the Suomi Kingdom by claiming that the Queen had fallen ill and he decided to take Princess Mermaid with him, though, he was slightly suspicious when the messenger insisted that he had to go alone, but he asserted his authority by stating that he had taken the girl into his care and if she won't go, then neither would he and everyone then relented, but once on board, his parents had revealed themselves and their ploy, separating him from Princess Mermaid and placing the poor girl in the ship's brig for the time being, and he resolved to go to the Suomi Kingdom and tell the Princess, straight to her face, that he had no desire to marry her, but then, as if by some twist of fate, fortunate had decided to smile on him, since Cecilia had turned out to be the Suomi Princess and he had been overjoyed. He honestly believed that he was dreaming and he remembered how, when after Princess Mermaid had been released, he had excitedly rushed into her room and told her the news and how he intended to marry Cecilia, only for Princess Mermaid to drop the mirror she had been holding in shock, causing it to break, and he did notice that she was strangely absent from the wedding ceremony. However, in all his excitement over reuniting with Cecilia, he had not even considered her feelings or how she would react to the issue.

However, once the ceremony was over and they boarded the ship bound for the Summer Palace as a stop-off before his and Cecilia's honeymoon, he remembered awakening to a bright red flash of light outside his window and then ran up on deck to investigate, having an eerily alarming feeling that something with terribly wrong, only to see Princess Mermaid jump off the deck of the ship despite his calls to her, and afterwards, when he went over to where she had jumped off, he found that she had left him her pearl hairpin and what looked like an oversized fish's scale identical to the one he remembered finding on a wound on his shoulder after waking up from on the shoreline near the church and it was then he remembered that he had seen Princess Mermaid before.

He remembered before waking up on the shoreline that he had briefly regained consciousness while out at sea and saw he face of a girl matching that of Princess Mermaid, and if he could remember clearly, he could have sworn that she was begging him to wake up. However, back then, since he had quickly lapsed back into unconsciousness, he believed that it had been nothing more than a hallucination or a dream, since he was barely conscious at the time and his mind was not exactly coherent, and so, he had just passed it off as a hallucination brought on by his near-death experience.

However, after discovering what Princess Mermaid had left him, everything suddenly started to make sense. In reality, he had really been so far out at sea that he would have drowned long before he would have been washed up on land. If what he could guess from the oversized fish scales, it seemed that Princess Mermaid really really had been an actual mermaid, and that she had been the one that really saved him, and Cecilia and the other girls had just found him on the shoreline. However, it did not take a genius to realise that Princess Mermaid must have fallen in love with him and had somehow managed to become human so she could be with him. He did seem to remember before waking up, hearing a voice begging him not to die, but like while he was out at sea and briefly regained consciousness, he passed it off as a phenomenon brought about by his near-death experience; either that or he had mistaken the voice for Cecilia's since she hadd already been there when he completely regained consciousness.

"And I totally blew her off and cast her aside," Fjord thought to himself shamefully, feeling rather low at the moment.

He really did feel as if he was among the lowest of the low. A mermaid girl rescued him and fell in love with him to the point where she somehow managed to become human just so she could be with him, and yet, he had fallen for someone else entirely and did not even considered the possibility that the mermaid girl was in love with him. It must have been due to her inability to talk, Fjord figured. However, he did tell Princess Mermaid about his desire to marry Cecilia, before knowing that she was the Suomi Princess and had told her than since he did not know where Cecilia was, and figured that he would probably never see her again, that he would be content marrying her instead. That had been stupid and foolish of him. He often found himself chiding himself at his stupidity. He should never have told Princess Mermaid that he would have married her in Cecilia's place. That had filled her with a sense of hope, and when it turned out that his parents' chosen bride for him turned out to be Cecilia, herself, all thoughts of his previous discussion with Princess Mermaid and his declaration to her went flying out the window.

The only evidence that seemed to go against this mysterious mermaid and Princess Mermaid being one and the same was the fact that he remembering hearing the mermaid speaking to him, even if her voice sounded rather distant and barely coherent and Princess Mermaid was a mute, but Fjord guessed that she must have lost her ability to speak sometime between rescuing him and becoming human. The evidence all fitted. He thought he saw a mermaid at his birthday part on a nearby iceberg, and even though he had only caught a glimpse of her, the mermaid did appear to have blonde hair, after the storm hit and he briefly regained consciousness, he saw a girl in the water with him, the only explanation to explain why she was there with him had to be because she was a mermaid; the oversized fish scale that covered his wound only further strengthening this. When Princess Mermaid first came to him, she was as naked as a new-born baby and he did get hints from the sea from her. When he told her that she had come to him from the sea, he never imagined that it would have been literally. He had originally assumed that she was the survivor of some shipwreck or pirate attack.

Now all he could do was wallow in his own guilt and regret that he had effectively cast her aside in favour of Cecilia. If only he had not allowed his parents to trick him and if only he had been more assertive in his opposition to their plan. He hated how weak he had been. If only he had been more strong-willed, then perhaps things would have been different and Princess Mermaid would still be alive. Maybe she would not have been driven to suicide. He did seem to recall that after he realised the truth of Princess Mermaid, that afterwards he had heard a dolphin that appeared to be chasing after her screaming, the name, Marina, over and over, but he could not be sure, though he did remember one time that when a dolphin came to the Summer Palace once, Princess Mermaid had rushed down to it and saved it from three naughty children who were throwing stones at it, and he remembered Princess Mermaid holding on to it and he made an offhand comment on how it looked as if it was a friend of hers.

"Could it have been the same dolphin?" he thought in wonder, but then decided that it did not really matter.

When Princess Mermaid had dropped the mirror in shock, that should have been a sign that she disapproved of his marriage to Cecilia, and yet, he had been so caught up in his excitement in that he had found the girl he had originally believed saved him that he had automatically assumed that it had been a clumsy move on Princess Mermaid's part. Her absence from the wedding should have been another, but once again, his excitement had gotten in the way of him realising the truth.

As for Cecilia herself, he had told her about Princess Mermaid afterwards, and understandably, she had slapped him, but not because she believed that he had intended on having her as a mistress, no, Cecilia had slapped him because of his blatant disregard for Princess Mermaid's feelings and how he had built her hopes up only to cause them to come crashing down round her. It only served to deepen his regret and unfortunately, he found himself wishing that Cecilia had misunderstood his intentions. Cecilia believing that he wanted Princess Mermaid as a mistress would have been better than her scolding him for his neglect and disregard of her. That had only served to increase his sense of guilt.

It certainly did not help that his mother had taken the pearl hairpin as her own and added it to her pearl collection, and as far as the subject of his parents were concerned, thinking of them filling him was a deep passionate fury that raged in his heart.

"You're thinking about her again, aren't you?" Cecilia said, bringing the young prince out of his thoughts and back to reality, and Fjord turned to stare into his wife's concerned eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose so," Fjord answered honestly, knowing that there was no point in arguing with his wife, since she seemed to read him like an open book.

Cecilia then let out a rather understanding sigh.

As for her, she had been sent to the church by the seashore as part of an education program to help further her own education. She remembered discovering Fjord on the shoreline when she and the other students had all gone down to the sea as part of their morning routine. For her, like with Fjord, it had been love at first sight. She just could not get over how strikingly handsome and beautiful he was. His bright brown hair and chocolate-coloured eye had really captivated her and she found herself staring into those beautiful eyes and losing herself in their gaze, and when he left, she just could not get him out of her head. From his clothes, she had assumed that he had been an aristocrat that had met with an unfortunate mishap at sea, and he did tell her of how, while celebrating his birthday while out at sea, the ship ended up in a storm in which the ship had sank.

However, she never imagined that he was a Prince of a neighbouring kingdom, and like Fjord, himself, believed with her, she honestly believed that she would never see him again, and also, like Fjord, when she heard that she had to marry a prince of a kingdom known as the Napoli Kingdom, she did not want to marry him, since she only had eyes for Fjord, and funnily enough, Fjord had felt the same way in that, before he knew that she was his bride, he had no desire to marry her, and had been planning on telling her to her face.

However, unlike Fjord, she had resided herself to her fate, since she knew that trying to get out of the arranged marriage was pointless. Her parents had been very firm when they told her of her marriage to the Napoli Prince, but she often had dreams in which at the wedding, Fjord came and rescued her from the Napoli Prince, whom, in her dreams had been a rather ugly and rude womanising bigot of a man, and she found herself longing that he would come for her and she prayed every night that he would come and save her from her impending fate.

However, as it turned out, Fjord did eventually come for her, though never would she had imagined that he would, in fact, be the prince her parents intended that she marry. Her prayers had been answered, though, not in the way she had intended. She felt that she must have been dreaming and Fjord confessed that he felt the same way, and afterwards, they had decided to get married right away.

However, she remembered waking up the next day on board the ship bound for Fjord's home at the Summer Palace and found him on the deck near the back of the ship with a strangely decorated pearl hairpin and an oversized fish scale, much like the one that she had seen covering a wound on his shoulder when she had found him on the shoreline that morning.

"And then, he told me about this girl he had found on the riverbank near the Summer Palace," she thought, as she let out a sorrowful sigh.

Yes, Fjord had told her about the girl that he had dubbed, Princess Mermaid, how a month earlier when he woke up a few days after arriving home from the church that he saw a girl with long blonde hair and beautifully sparkling turquoise-coloured eyes and her pupils would often appear to be a deep aqua blue colour whenever the light shone on them. He told her of how he had taken the girl into his care and looked after her for the next month or so, and Fjord had also told her of how she had told this girl, after the Napoli Kingdom's Lord Chamberlain had informed him of his parents' plans to marry him off, how he did not want to marry the bride that his parents had chosen for him, but instead wanted to marry the girl with black hair that he believed rescued him.

"Rescue him, all I did was find him," Cecilia thought to herself.

Anyway, Fjord told this, Princess Mermaid, that since he couldn't find her and believed that he would never see her again, that he would rather marry her, and that had shocked Cecilia. However, she continued to listen to him as he explained that his parents had tricked him into going to the Suomi Kingdom by pretending that the Queen had fallen ill, and that he brought Princess Mermaid along with him, but unfortunately, Fjord's parents disapproved of her, and believed that she was some sort of evil temptress that had bewitched their son, and she remembered how her in-laws had praised her over how she had "lifted the spell" that the "sea-dwelling whore" had cast on their son.

Furious anger rushed through her as she thought about that. She was angry at both Fjord and his parents; angry at Fjord for building up that poor girl's hopes, only to cast her aside. She did not know why, but somehow she found herself sympathising with Princess Mermaid, despite the fact that she had never even met her. Maybe it was because she had listened to Fjord's story and reserved her judgement for after he had finished explaining the situation. It was strange. Here she had an unknown rival that had committed suicide after she lost out to her, and yet, she found herself completely sympathising with her.

Fjord had gone on to explain on how he theorised that Princess Mermaid must have been an actual mermaid that had dragged him to shore after he was thrown into the sear during the storm, since he confided in her that he remembered briefly regaining consciousness and seeing Princess Mermaid's face before lapsing back into unconsciousness and how he realised that he had been so far from the nearest shoreline that he would have drowned long before he ended up being washed up on land. He reckoned that Princess Mermaid, or whatever her real name was, must have fallen in love with him and somehow became human in order to be with him.

"I don't know why, but somehow, I find myself believing that," she thought, as she briefly closed her eyes.

Maybe it was because on the morning she had found him, she had looked out to sea and caught the brief glimpse of long blonde hair, followed by a fish-like tail as something was diving beneath the surface, but at the time, the glare from the sun had been in her eyes, and she initially thought that it was just a big fish, and that the blonde hair had been a trick of the light. Nonetheless, despite how ridiculous and farfetched it sounded, she found herself believing that Princess Mermaid had originally been an actual mermaid with the oversized fish scales, plus the fact, that when Princess Mermaid had been found, she had been devoid of clothing seemed to point towards that being the truth.

Anyway, she was angry and furious at Fjord for his neglect and disregard for Princess Mermaid's feelings. He had told her that he did not love Princess Mermaid like he loved her, but that only served to infuriate the Suomi Princess further. She felt that Fjord should have made his feelings clear, but instead, had promised Princess Mermaid that he would marry her because he could not find the girl he wanted. Cecilia believed that Princess Mermaid must have felt betrayed and used; like a trophy that had been discarded as soon as a newer, more expensive looking one came along. The fact that Fjord had spent a whole month living with the girl, and yet, failed to realise that she was in love with him only increased her anger. She was angry at Fjord's ignorance over the matter.

"Gee, even though we never met, I wouldn't be surprised if you really hate me," she thought, as a wave of depression washed over her and she let out a sorrowful sigh, "After all, I must've ruined your life."

Nonetheless, Fjord now could do nothing but wallow in his own guilt and misery as he pondered on what could have been. Sure, he still loved Cecilia and was grateful for everything she had done for him after she had found him, but he could not help but beat himself up over how he had stupidly cast Princess Mermaid aside, and the fact that he was too caught up in his own excitement to have realised the poor girl's distress was not enough in Cecilia's opinion. She would have loved to have met her, even if all she would have gotten from her were hateful glares and slaps to the face.

"Anyway, I wonder what's going on over there," Fjord said, bringing his wife out of her thoughts and back to reality, as he produced a telescope.

"Huh?" Cecilia said in a brief moment of confusion before shaking her head, "What?"

"I said, I wonder what's going on over on that other ship," Fjord said, motioning his head over to the ship that was shooting out fireworks.

"Who knows," the Suomi Princess replied with a shrug, as Fjord turned and brought the telescope up to his right eye and looked through it, trying to get a decent view of the ship's deck, "Maybe it's someone's birthday party."

She then let out a joking chuckle, causing her husband to bring the telescope away from his eye and shoot her a brief glare, not happy at being reminded of his misfortune while out at sea during his birthday.

However, he then quickly went back to looking through the telescope and focused on the ship's deck, which seemed to have people dancing around and having a good time. However, as he continued to look through the telescope, his eyes widened in shock, as he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a blonde-haired woman before someone moved in front of her.

"Huh, no way, now I know that I'm hallucinating," he said aloud, shaking his head as he then went back to looking through the telescope in order to check what he had seen.

"What is it?" Cecilia asked curiously, as she watched her husband focus the telescope.

However, Fjord did not answer her and continued to focus the telescope on the blonde-haired woman. However, the other ship was so far away that even with a telescope, it was difficult to clearly make out anyone that was on the deck, plus the flashes from the fireworks along with the other people moving in front of the blonde-haired woman only served to make Fjord's job harder.

"Is something wrong?" Cecilia asked in a loud voice, hoping to get her husband's attention.

"What?" Fjord said, as he turned to face her with a brief look of confusion on his face before he shook his head with a sigh, "No, I think that the light from the fireworks must be playing tricks on me again because, I'm not really sure, but I could have sworn that I saw a woman on that ship that resembled Princess Mermaid."

Cecilia's eyes widened in shock at hearing this, and she turned her head to look nearby when she heard a violent hissing sound and found that Fjord's pet cat, Jemmy was hissing while glaring towards the other ship in the distance.

"However, it's probably just my imagination," Fjord said, waving it off with a wave of his hand, "Even if it is a blonde-haired woman, it's not necessarily Princess Mermaid."

"Yes, after all, she's dead, so we won't have to worry about that little mermaid tramp anymore," Cecilia heard a female voice whisper, causing her to look at Jemmy, since the voice came from her general direction and she was the only one there.

Nonetheless, shaking her head, deciding to ignore the voice, the black-haired princess found herself nodded in agreement with her husband.

"But, what if it is her?" Fjord then went on to ask no one in particular, as he found himself wondering if that was possible.

He remembered seeing her jump off the back of his ship and assumed that she must've drowned, unless of course she had transformed back into a mermaid, but somehow he found that unlikely. His supposed sighting was probably just nothing more than his imagination. Yes, it was clear that the figure he had seen was a blonde-haired woman, but he knew that Princess Mermaid was not the only girl to have long blonde hair. Maybe it was someone that looked a bit like her, but not her. It was probably just the fact that he was too far away from her to be sure, combined with the flashes from the fireworks and his own guilt over Princess Mermaid that was playing havoc with his imagination.

However, the more he tried to dismiss it as a case of mistaken identity, the more he found himself wanting to make sure. He found himself glancing towards the other ship, only to pull his gaze away and shake his head, but then his gaze would automatically travel back to the other ship as if in some sort of trance.

"I find that extremely unlikely," Cecilia said in response to his question, "After all, didn't you say that she jumped off the back of the ship, and that was, about what, six months ago? Not to mention that we're a long way from the Mediterranean Sea."

"Yeah, I suppose that it is just my imagination, and that that girl over there is just another girl that happens to have blonde hair," Fjord said in agreement, as his wife nodded, but then her face fell at his next statement, "But I have to be sure."

He did not what what it was, but for some reason, he just had to check and be sure. Sure, he knew that there was a high chance that he was probably wasting his own time, but the more he tried telling himself that, the more unbearable and irresistable the urge to go over and see for himself became. He just could not let this opportunity slip; not if there was a chance, not matter how small, that Princess Mermaid was somehow still alive.

"What, now wait a minute," Cecilia spoke up with a surprised look on her face, as Fjord started to make his way towards one of the ship's lifeboats and Jemmy let out a hateful hiss of fury, but she ignored her as she followed her husband.

"What is it?" Fjord asked, as he stopped and turned back to regard her.

"You're not going over there to check, are you?" the Suomi Princess asked, shooting her husband a glare.

"That was my intention, yes," Fjord admitted with a nod, and from the look on his face, it was clear that Cecilia was not going to dissuade him from going over there.

"Now, wait a minute," Cecilia said, shooting her husband an equally determined look, letting him know that he was not going to dissuade her either, "You're probably just wasting your time, you know. And even, on the off chance that you're right, just what do you intend to say to her?"

Fjord opened his mouth to reply, but suddenly stopped himself as an unsure look appeared on his face, as he realised that he had no idea just what he was going to say to her… that is if it did turn out to be her. After all, the last he remembered seeing her, she had jumped off his ship into the sea, probably feeling betrayed, used and heartbroken. If she had somehow survived and also somehow managed to make it all the way up to the North Sea, no doubt in Fjord's mind that he would be the last person she probably wanted to see.

"No doubt, she would have moved on since then," Cecilia went on to explain, unknowingly voicing her husband's next thoughts, "You going over there would probably create a scene."

Fjord flinched at that, realising that his wife was probably right.

"I know that, but…" he started to say with a sigh.

"However, if I can't dissuade you, then I'm going with you," Cecilia went on, interrupting her husband, and causing his eyes to widen in shock, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Cecilia raised her hand, silencing him before continuing to speak, "I realise that this might be a bit much, but on the off chance that you are right, I want to meet her and see her for myself. If she's going to be taking her anger out on anyone, it might as well be me."

"What?" Fjord said, as his eyes widened in shock and disbelief.

"After all," Cecilia continued, choosing to ignore her husband, "I'm the one that ruined her life."

Fjord wanted to protest, but looking into his wife's eyes, he knew that any further argument was pointless. Cecilia was a very stubborn woman when she chose to be and once she made up her mind, it was impossible convincing her to change it. At length, he let out a sigh, letting his wife know that he conceded to her as both of them headed towards the lifeboat.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes<strong> – My, that was a longer-than-intended chapter. Sorry for the delay. It's just that I was going to get this up some time back in March, but I got side-tracked. So I hope that it's worth the wait. Anyway, a little geography note…. I realise that the Mediterranean Sea is so far south that the climate is too warm for icebergs to form, but I already have an explanation in place to explain that, and I will say that it's to do with the anime's Sea Witch (whom, as you remember, I've named Devillia Del Ray). Also Fjord and Cecilia both have parts to play, which is why I introduced them this chapter.


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